No. That figure is based on it being at Lat/Long Zero (in the Gulf of Guinea), when it was sending null positions without sat-lock. It was actually over the Irish Sea today, flying at an altitude of 11.5km, from where its horizon would be under 400km.
If itās sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Seems like a case of garbage in, garbage out.
ā¦a problem Iām having with the tracker into which I loaded firmware via @CA2RXU 's CA2RXU LoRa Tracker Firmware Flasher earlier. Itās been sitting with a view of the sky for three hours and still hasnāt figured out where it is. Iām beginning to suspect I loaded up the wrong versionā¦
most of the times, when flashing the board for the first time or updating the firmware the gps needs to download the almanac (list of available gps) and this takes time.
so I recommend to leave it outside and return to it after a few hoursā¦ after this process, each time it reboots , the time to get gps fix will be just lower than a min with clear sky
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More likely that the ceramic antenna unit is faulty - do you have another you can swap in from a known good unit? Replacement units only cost a few pounds and then you could get one with a larger patch antenna for improved performance.
But take care unplugging them from the tiny U.FL connector - I once managed to pull the socket off the board on my T-Beam (then managed to fit a new one, fortunately).
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LB5JJ with the T Deck Plus
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It was working well enough with the previous version of the code.
In the past Iād have expected an almanac download not to take more than an hour or so. Three hours seemed excessive. Iāll charge it up again, try and find somewhere dry where it can see the sky, and hope the battery holds out long enough (but, looking at the weather forecast, that might not be soon.
I had a problem trying to get the latest Heltec version to work (2025 date).
Reverted to a late 2024 version and fired up perfectly
The one I tried was āHeltec Wireless Tracker V2.1.4 (11 January 2025)ā. Iāll give V2.1.1 (21 December 2024) a go and see whether it gets a fix any quickerā¦
Hi John,
If you can fix the weather in the Lakes, weāll happily visit and activate more regularly (carrying our LoRa tracker).
On average though, every time weāve visited the area in the last few years, weāve lost at least 50% of our holiday visit days to bad weather (bad enough that SOTA is not feasible I mean). Compared to visiting Spain, France, Andorra etc, where we have maybe lost 5% of days, and had to walk in a valley instead of in the mountains.
Further, itās generally more expensive for us to stay in the Lakes for two weeks, than it is to fly to Barcelona, rent a car and then stay in an apartment on the Spanish border.
Not that I want to put people off visiting the Lakes of course, but if you are limited to ~25 days of A/L per year from work, those days really need to be utilised effectively.
73, Simon.
nothing has changed in the way it processed the GPS from more than 1 year. So if it gets faster fix is only because of the flashing process one time
A screenshot taken from the GB0SNB Kelvedon Hatch WebSDR in Essex, I was looking for LoRa signals on 439.9125 MHz and this appeared (ignore the fact the receiver is tuned for a different frequency), no wonder LoRA canāt be used on 2M
I installed V2.1.1 (21 December 2024). The weatherās not good, so Iām relying on the sky it can see from a windowsill, but it got a fix fairly quickly. Well under an hour, anyway.
Iāve now re-installed V2.1.4 (11 January 2025) and put it in the same place to see how quickly it gets a fix. Satellite geometry will, of course, have changed a bit, so itās not an exactly repeatable test.
Edit: ā¦and it got a fix within 30 minutes. Iām guessing yesterdayās āover three hours and still no fixā issue mustāve been something like a bad mix of wet weather and satellite geometryā¦
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