Raymarine E Series "Position Fix Lost" Need Help

[PurpleCedarPlug]

New Boat in April 2009. I have E120, (2) E80's, DMS 300, Smart Heading sensor, etc (No Autopilot)
Everything has worked great on the boat up until 2 weeks ago. Started unit up, no GPS fix. Powered on/off 3 time, finally get a gps fix.
For the next week, power unit on an sometimes finally get a gps fix after 2, 5 even 10 min.
Last Fri, cannot get a gps fix at all. Service rep comes down and replaces Raystar 125 antenna. We get a gps fix and then loose it after we power unit off and on again. Try another antenna powered directly to one of the E80's after we make it the "master". Now our "gps fix" is on for a while, then we loose it, then it comes back on...etc.

Service rep hooks original antenna up to an E 80 he has in the shop and gets a fix with it all day long with no problems. So, it's not the antenna.

Anybody have any thoughts or suggestions on what I have going on here. Everything worked perfect for 5 months and now everytime on power up, I don't know if my gps is going to find the boat or not.

Deep, I know you had issue's last year and I beleive, Free Spirit on here had some good info for you.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Ed

[Free Spirit]

Ed, give me a call. 609-926-9017

[tolock]

I would like to here the answer to this as well. I am having a similar problem with my E120's as well. They will be working fine and then they will loose the fix, sometimes it comes back within a few minutes other times I have to power off and power on the unit to get my position fix back. Yesterday it happened approx. 6 times, but the other day when I was out it did not happen at all. Any suggestions on where to start?

Thanks,
Tom

[hrdcor32]

similar issue here, please share what you find out

thanks!

[PurpleCedarPlug]

I spoke with Free Spirit, Raymarine and my service tech. We will be on the boat today and tomarrow troubleshooting.

Hopefully we'll figure this out. I'll post back our findings...

[Deep C]

Free Spirit is on the game! His people get er done. I was about 45 failures of some kind in our system in just over a year. Their tech came and got it right last year thanks to him...

[tolock]

I spoke with Free Spirit, Raymarine and my service tech. We will be on the boat today and tomarrow troubleshooting.

Hopefully we'll figure this out. I'll post back our findings...

Thanks, I appreciate the help. Good Luck.

[PurpleCedarPlug]

Wanted to get back to this post as we fixed the problem.

From what I understand. Simply, when the electronics were originally installed, the GPS antenna was originally wired to get's it power directly from the E120. Only when I turned the E120 on would it send power to the antenna. Don at Mid Shore Electronics did some re wiring so that now when we turn the electronics breaker on, the antenna is now getting it's power from all the raymarine electronics on the boat as apposed to only one unit.

Bottom line, the GPS antenna was not getting enough power feed to it to get a "fix".

Everything works fine now. Thank Don and Mid Shore Electronics in OC for helping me out.

[tolock]

Thank you, I will be checking that out on my electronics tomorrow.

Tom