raymarine c120 gps antenna

[erice]

i've got a c120 raymarine chartplotter/radar unit. was working fine (but we originally had difficulty getting it running because of hard fit to radar cable), then lost the "fix". tried cleaning contacts, worked fine, then next time, no fix. radar is fine. checked rs 125 gps antenna, light flashing green showing good communications, but no satalites are found. power to antenna is ok, but i'm lost. any ideas?

[loubennett]

Raymarine had trouble with the earlier GPS125 units. Many of them failed long before they should. How old is your GPS 125?

[erice]

i bought this unit used 4 months ago, but it was originally purchased oct 2008

[loubennett]

I think that's well past the problem period, but your problem could still be a failed unit. The GPS 125 is not just an antenna. It is the complete GPS receiver. You said there is a flashing green light indicating good communication with the C120. If that's the case I would suspect the GPS 125 is not workng. Double check the manuals though because often the lights on GPS units indicate what mode the receiver is in (searching, acquiring, fix achieved, etc.). That would be a great help in determining whether the problem is the GPS 125 or the C120.

[erice]

following the raymarine troubleshooting guide, i checked across the plug ins for the 125, of the 4 tests, only 1 matched what it was supposed to do, the others were much lower voltage. also, the green light flashing indicates the unit is working.

[loubennett]

I think I would try do a factory reset of the C120. You may lose any customization of the settings you have changed including waypoints and routes but it could restore the operation of the GPS. Sometimes the software goes off in the weeds and the reset starts it from scratch. In the worst case send the C120 back to Raymarine for repair. They do it for a flat fee. The biggest problem is they are slow. You may get faster service if you go through an authorized dealer.

[Bidgood]

I had a similar problem and it turned out to be the antenna. Raymarine has a newer GPS antenna that corrected this problem with the older model. You might want to just check in to that as part of you diagnostics.

Tom L.

[erice]

EUREKA! found poor wire connection. where 2 red & 1 green go together in the connector. resecured same, working like $6 now. thanks for all the tips.