I have a RayMarine SeaTalk based RayStar 120 GPS antenna which is a
piece of crap. On almost a daily basis it will lose position fix and
the requires power cycling to have it re-aquire a fix. According to
some marine electronics people that I've talked to, this was a known
problem with some of the units and is what prompted them to come out
with the RayStar 125 antenna. Since this is already the 2nd RayMarine
GPS antenna that I've purchased, I don't want to give them any more
money!

What I want to do is to mount another GPS antenna and have it feed
NMEA GPS data to the NMEA input of my RayMarina ST6001 control head.
I think that the ST6001 will convert the NMEA data into SeaTalk
sentances. The C80 chartplotter should see position data from 2
sources via SeaTalk and when the RayStar 120 antenna goes offline, I
should have no loss of position.

An alternative is to feed the NMEA data from the antenna directly to
the C80, but that involves pulling a cable to a very difficult
location.

1) Does the above solution sound like it will work? And suggestions
regarding it?

2) Any suggestions on an NMEA GPS antenna?

3) I've been looking at the Garmin GPS17 (http://www.gme.net.au/garmin/
gps17n_specifications.php) antenna and I think that it would do the
job. Any comments on this?

Thanks, Geoff (who just arrived in Deltaville, VA)