Alpine Satellite signal lost.

[Al]

As posted elsewhere I have now got my Alpine talking to me after 6 months and the latest dealer visit. Yippee. However I now have found another new issue which may or may not be new. Maybe I just never noticed before as I couldn't hear the voice.....

On my way home from the dealer with re-flashed unit swung into my drive to be informed 'Satellite signal lost' or similar message. Sure enough on bottom left on nav screen beside signal strength zero out of 5 or however many bars. Car still away somewhere else and stopped. Didn't think much of it but I did about 1700 miles in the last 2 weeks before returning offshore and it happened a lot when no reason to and I have found the following after many observations.

Rapid changes of directions seem to initially upset the dead reckoning facility I think (the dot that appears on the screen where it really thinks you are between calculations.) and then after a while it gets so confused that it eventually spits the dummy and fails, but says lost signal, where in effect it hasn't lost it at all but has decided that that is the fault. After it starts to gets lost you are actually still receiving full signal strength until it decides in fault then drops to zero. Now I have managed to get this to happen with the "stay on road" option selected and not selected. It was worse with it selected because if you drive somewhere where there is a new road not mapped as I do frequently it tries to stay on a road and can't so gets lost then fails. With it not selected it isn't so bad but if charging down country lanes at speed with lots of direction changing then gets lost just the same. So far the only sure fire way of resetting it is to switch off ignition and restart and will be fine instantly. Harldy ideal.

Ironically this problem caused me to be late arriving at Hethel for a driving experience as we listened to sat nav directions from a hopelessly lost unit before we realised not even on the same road as us! This was only driving from meeting Guy Munday at Stratton over 5 miles or whatever.

Lets just say the old paper maps still were used a hell of a lot over our driving weekend. Ridiculous in a car like this! Dealer Service Mngr. has listened and is going to take car in next time home for another play with it and has now experienced it himself in another car of early vintage like mine. He thinks maybe another software upgrade is called for via the net.