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GPS unreliability?

I am at Firmware 11.60 and GPS 5.40. A few weeks ago, I found the watch had long delays locking onto GPS at the start of a run, and I would get bad results that messed up my training status. I tried the power cycle approach and that seemed to fix it. I also bumped from just GPS to GPS+GLONASS. Since then things *seemed* to have been ok, though now I suspicious I have been getting incorrect pace data.

Yesterday I ran a four hour marathon and the watch never locked on. It did a sort of amazing job estimating the pace and distance, considering, though it was of about 15% on both, but there's no map or geo data in the Connect screens. I will try the power-cycle again, but these are all new problems. Do they indicate problems with the firmware or an actual hardware issue?

0 Dr Phil over 2 years ago

They indicate possible issues with he satellite ephemeris data. This is stored in a file in the RemoteSW folder. On newer watches it’s a CPE fIle but unsure what it’s called on older watches. Either a sync with Garmin Express or leaving the watch outside for 15 mins plus will update it. If updating that file does not improve the GPS connection at start then you might well have a problem watch.

0 Peter Hand over 2 years ago in reply to Dr Phil

Thank you, that's very helpful, I didn't know anything about that, but it matches other advice I've seen to start the activity way before starting the timer to allow GPS to lock. I assume the watch has to be in that state to update the file, at least I don't know of a way to get it to lock on GPS outside of an activity, but I'll check the manual. Thanks again!

0 Dr Phil over 2 years ago in reply to Peter Hand

Peter Hand said:
I don't know of a way to get it to lock on GPS outside of an activity,

In any GPS activity do the following in the Settings, set the Power Save timeout to Extended - default is Normal. That will allow the activity to remain open for around 25 minutes before closing and returning to the watch face. Select that activity, no need to start it, and leave the watch outside with a clear view of the sky for 15 minutes or more. That will be enough to refresh the ephemeris data.

It might be useful to delete the file from the REMOTESW folder before you do this anyway just to ensure you have a new file and not an overwritten one. You can delete any files you find in the REMOTESW folder anyway as Ann necessary ones will be regenerated following a sync to Garmin Express.

0 Luca over 2 years ago

For F6 they have just released GPS 6.30 and it seems that it works well, including instantaneous pace (finally) but they haven't distributed it to us yet, everything else is mythology