External Antenna - first impressions!

[mickmills]

I have just recieved my TTG External Antenna and I thought I would make a few points that no-one else seems to have made on this forum.

1) The Antenna itself is tiny... about the size of an old Pentium 2 processor (but three times the thickness). It is much smaller than the GPS Antenna you see fitted production cars.

2) As such it would easily fit on the windscreen behind the rear view mirror (indeed there is a diagram on the packaging that shows this as a mounting point)

3) The Antenna is magnetic... but there seems to be no "Sticky" stuff supplied to stick it to said windscreen

4) Also there is virtually zero instructions... you get just a handfull of diagrams (although its not rocket science)

5) Although you get a new mount supplied to put your TTG on, you don't get the sucker bit (You have to un bolt the sucker bit from your existing mount and put it on the new mount). This is really annoying. For the sake of a £2 sucker saving,... they have prevented me from having two mountiings (one for my car that needs the antenna & one for the missus car that doesn't). What makes things worse... I don't think you can buy the little sucker bit seperately!

7) The above wouldn't be bad if is wasn't for the fact that the sum of parts looks like they are worth £20.... it doesn't look like a £40 - £50 item.

8) Having said all those negitive things, I must say that this antenna works.... and it works very,very well.
For example - The place where I mess about with my TTG (front room by window) gets only a 1 sat signal... and that can take 5 mins to lock on!! Even when I am outside my house the TTG can take 2-3 mins to get a sat lock on. However, with this antenna fitted... I get a 5 sat lock on's in seconds (from my front room).

9) Finally, Was you paying enough attention to notice I left out point 6 ?

As a sum of parts this I don't think this item is worth £50 (especially when they scrimped on a £2 sucker). However, when you consider how effective it is.... then perhaps it is worth £50 ?

[DavidW]

[mickmills]

yes, I saw the smilely but I didn't have the option to edit my post.

However, somebody seems to have done it for me?

[DavidW]

I did - as well as commenting on the problem.



David

[gingernut777]

[jdatkinson]

Just got my external antenna today. Easy enough to set up; i'm using it in my Vauxhall Corsa at the moment so i've just draped the wire along the transmission tunnel, run it under the back seat and threaded it out of the tailgate so it sits on the roof at the rear of the car. The wire sits on the rubber seals and does not seem to get kinked when the tailgate is shut. Seems to stick well, and can easily be taken off and dropped into the back of the car so it can't be seen by interested passers by. I've just done my usual run to work to test it (night shifts :x again) and the signal is a vast improvement. I've consistently found with the Corsa driving into Leeds that the signal goes from 3/5 on the main display to 0/5 as soon as I get to the city centre loop road and then fails to recover at all while in the centre. Today, I lost signal for about 5 seconds going under a bridge and then had 4/5 or 5/5 for the rest of the run which is a clear improvement, and I had 5/5 all the way along the motorway. Neither of our cars have athermic windscreens and both work reasonably well with the Go on its own, but it looks like the antenna will improve the quality of GPS reception considerably.

All I need now is a decent map (i'm an embittered v314 user) and i'll be happy.......

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