750 GO LIVE - External antenna?

[uk89camaro]

Had great pleasure in getting a free upgrade hire car this week ( a corsa to an A8...yay!), which came with a built in sat nav of course. Trouble was, it was in flemmish, and is intuitively as easy to use as the manual to perform a hard reset of a nuclear power station.

So, bring out my backup, stuck it on the windscreen, and no GPS fix. Re-boot, wait 10 minutes, no fix. Unmounted it to faff with it, and noticed it got a partial fix by the open drivers window. Then I remembered reading somewhere that some cars need an external antenna as the vehicle glass has certain properties that make a GPX fix nigh on impossible.

So there I am in a proper plush motor, driving from Antwerp to Paris with my 750 clamped onto the drivers window (6 inches open too, bloody freezing), for 4 hours.

However, there doesn't appear to be any port on the unit for such an antenna, nor anything on sale. So I'm assuming it's not an option. Could someone please confirm, or otherwise.

Cheers.
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Tom Tom 1005 v2 World, Garmin Dakota 20, IPhone 4S

[mikealder]

As I recall there is provision for an external connection to use a remote GPS patch aerial which comes out of the device via the multiway connector in the base, however nobody has ever released a mount provisioned with an external GPS connection leaving you little choice than leave it where it can get a position fix.

When did you last have it connected to the Home software as the quickGPS data might need refreshing - Mike

[uk89camaro]

I generally update the GPS fix once a week, but I don't think that was the issue, as once outside of the car it grabbed a fix within 90 seconds. The A8 just has uber unfriendly GPS glass I think, and presumably the built in unit has an antenna outside of the cabin.

As I normally get a corsa or a punto, I don't think it'll be a common re-occurance!
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Tom Tom 1005 v2 World, Garmin Dakota 20, IPhone 4S

[mikealder]

Strange as the x50 TomTom units usually work under Athermic glass without the need for an external aerial, I guess the Audi has a thicker than normal titanium coating on its windscreen making reception rather difficult - Mike

[Andy_P]

"Vorsprung durch Technik"
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"Settling in nicely" ;-)

[uk89camaro]

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