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Q. I'm trying to use WAAS on my eTrex Venture/Legend/Vista but I'm not able to obtain a differential position. What could be wrong?

A. There are three items to look at:
(1) Ensure that you have enabled the WAAS mode in the System screen of the Main Menu.
(2) Depending on your location, you may not have a good line of sight to the required WAAS satellite which will make signal reception very difficult.
(3) You may not have collected enough information from the WAAS satellite. (See below for details.)

Detail:
(1) Please refer to your Owner's Manual for instructions on enabling the WAAS feature.
(2) There are currently two WAAS satellites that can be received in the United States. One is over the Atlantic Ocean and one is over the Pacific Ocean. The satellites are in a geo-stationary orbit over the equator, so the farther north you are, the greater the difficulty in picking up the signal. These factors put the satellites very close to the visible horizon, allowing the signal to be blocked by terrain or buildings (the WAAS signal is in the same frequency range as the GPS signal and is a line of sight transmission). The best results using WAAS with the eTrex Venture/Legend/Vista units will occur by literally "pointing" the patch antenna of the unit at the location of the satellite. You can determine this by looking for satellites 35 (East Coast) and 47(West Coast) on the Satellite Status page in your GPS unit.
(3) You will need to allow the unit to have good visibility of the WAAS satellites and track the signal for 10-20 minutes. After the initial data collection takes place, the unit will be able to quickly acquire the WAAS satellites and will normally take about 1-2 minutes to obtain a differential position fix. For more information on how to read the satellite status page, please refer to the appropriate owner's manual for your GPS.

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