Garmin GPSMap 276C won't acquire satellites

[Libertad-Carl]

Hi all,
Not sure if this is the right place to put this and a search didn't turn up anything on this.

My new Garmin GPSMap 276C chartplotter wouldn't acquire satellites, just sat there and eventually goes to the page that asks if you want to go to simulate. Searched the web and found that loading up the latest software, Ver 5.40 was the fix so if anyone else has this problem that is the fix.

[David M]

I remember that with an old Northstar GPS that I had that two new GPS satellites launched a couple years ago did the same thing to my unit which required that I download a new patch. I wonder if it is for the same reason?

[Libertad-Carl]

The crazy part is I got the unit for Christmas and spent all winter playing with it. It did everything right. I mounted it on the boat in a great spot at the helm! Tried it out and it worked great. Then the first time I went to use it for it's intended purpose instead of playing with it, it kaffed out on me. So we sailed with the old back up hand held for the evening! Hah!

[scotte]

Another common fix for this sort of problem is to force the unit into autolocation mode so it downloads all new ephemeris data. You'll have to look into the manual for your particular unit on how to do that though.