Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | I find your insights into the Canadian problems very interesting.
You did mention Geomagnetic activity last Friday. Is this a possible contributing factor to my problem?
I returned to work today after being gone farming Friday and Saturday. I related my WAAS loss story to our salesmen. He indicated that others had called in with similiar dropouts with the same equipment. This may be coincidence since we have sold many Raven 115's or possibly the 115 is more suspectible. The salesmen indicated that he had advised those who could to reprogram their 115s to PRN 135 which is the new WAAS satellite that is currently in the test mode.
The downside to this is that a computer is needed running the Raven Front Panel program to make this change. For those who are running Vipers, the program is available via the Viper itself. For those of us running other equipment, a laptop or PC is needed to utilize the Front Panel program to make the WAAS change. My fear is that if I change to PRN 135 and the signal is dropped due to testing procedures that I'm out of luck until I reprogram back to PRN 122 and hope to use it again.
I find the discussion about the differences in antenna design and shape to be interesting. This may also explain why there are more problems with some designs than others. I'm still curious about my simple solution of raising the antenna above the cab roof line. I know that a ground plane is desirable for transmitting two radio communications. I was under the assumption that the Deere cab tops were not a very good ground plane. I have heard that a larger piece of flat metal (about the size of a Stop Sign) has been used to improve radio transmission. I wasn't aware that this was an issue in reception however.
As I stated in the original post, I hope my experiences of this weekend are not indicative of what we can expect. |
WAAS Changes?
