About a minute after leaving the strip I reached over to dial up Boscombe Down's frequency. Right there on the screen, in big green letters, was a message - NO GPS POSITION - the message light was flashing and that confirmed the lack of a signal. Mr Garmin (a GNS530W) was lost in space. The satellites may have been talking but for whatever reason the 530 wasn't listening.
For a few seconds I just couldn't believe it - this kind of stuff just doesn't happen, and yet despite turning it off and on again, always a good cure for electrical ills, nothing changed.
I was on a short VFR flight in the local area and with visibility at least 50k the danger of getting lost was minimal, and of course I had my Garmin aera sitting on the yoke merrily picking up signals. Had I been on an IFR flight the loss of the 530 would have been a major pain.
I'm hoping that the problem is as simple as a lose aerial connection or similar - I want my 530 back.
Update: order has been restored in my GPS world. As hoped, there was a problem with the antenna connection, and once that was fixed everything came back to life. I'm going to have to re-visit my evangelical enthusiasm for GPS, or at least tone it down a little…
I'm hoping that the problem is as simple as a lose aerial connection or similar - I want my 530 back.
Update: order has been restored in my GPS world. As hoped, there was a problem with the antenna connection, and once that was fixed everything came back to life. I'm going to have to re-visit my evangelical enthusiasm for GPS, or at least tone it down a little…
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