BoatBanter.com - Question about GPS antennas.

Ron:

On my boat (Westsail 32) I have a Garmin GPS 76 that I use hooked to
Maptech's Offshore Navigator software running on a 2nd hand laptop. The
whole package sits on my chart table. I thought I'd need an external
antenna, but tried it without just in case. Turns out that GPS 76 "looks"
right through the cabin overhead without a hitch. (And that's two
fiberglass layers of about 3/8" each, separated by 3/4" of plywood, so it's
fairly thick.) No external antenna for me, then.

I'm really sold on the Maptech software. It does everything the GPSMAP units
do, but the display is a computer screen, not just a tiny patch. Yes, you
put a few more bucks into the system, but I thought it was worth doing that
way. I bought an old Dell laptop on eBay that has a 15" screen, so I can
leave the whole system on the chart table out of the weather, but still see
it nicely from the cockpit. FWIW.

Fair winds,

Dick

"Ron Patterson" wrote in message
om...
I am considering purchasing the Garmin GPSMAP 162 for my boat. I am
undecided about whether to get the internal or external antenna. There
is only a twenty bucks difference between the two so I thought I would
just get the external antenna model. But there might be a time when I
did not wish to use the antenna. So my question is, does the external
antenna model also have an internal antenna? That is, will it work
without the external antenna, or, once I choose the external antenna
model am I always stuck with providing an external antenna?

Ron Patterson