SO 43DS Garmin GPSMAP 4010

[Pinta]

I’m looking for a suitable location for the GPS 17 antenna on my boat. It may make more sense a location nearer to the water level.
Thanks in advance for your advice.

[Zanshin]

GPS signals are weak and while you could keep the antenna inside the hull and behind the instrument panel in the 43DS it would be much better to get line-of-sight to the satellites. You could easily run the cable through to the life raft area (I had my genset there) and from there pull it through and up into the stern rails. It might be a bit of work to get the cable through the hole(s) but you'll be happy with excellent reception you'll get.

[Pinta]

Thanks for the post, just the info I needed. However, I had already known that the antenna can’t be inside the hull, I’m landsurveyor and this is our daily device . What I meant was, either on deck or in the mast. So, on the aft deck is a good place.




Perhaps the cable(17mm) could be routed through the tube??

[Zanshin]

On the rail at the top is the preferred location. The cable should fit through the tube, I did it on the 43DS and on my 49DS but it is a bit of work (I used a feeder wire first and had to remove caulking). Unfortunately, the plug is too big to fit through the stanchion holes, but you can cut the cable and run that through, then use a special coax cable fitting to join the two parts back together somewhere in the boat. The 43DS uses Kevlar for parts of the hull (I don't know which) and that material wreaks havoc with radio waves so I would guess that if you mounted where your arrow points you would lose half your horizon of GPS signals.

[Pinta]

With the red line I wanted to show only the laying of the cable, you're right, the receiver/antenna should on the top at the rail in conjunction with the Glomex Ra 145.
The Garmin NMEA 2000 cabel backbone/ Drop 10m has one plug with diameter =17mm, the cable =7mm with five wires inside(no coax cable, can not be cut).



Is the lifeline stanchion not bigger then 17mm??

[Zanshin]

The red line shows exactly how I pulled my 2nd GPS through (for the AIS system). I'm fairly certain that the holes in the stanchions are too small for either fitting to make it through. Normal wires can be spliced/soldered easier than coax, especially if you have excess cable; while I don't like doing it the other option is to drill a 1cm hole in your deck and use a waaterproof gland to pull the cable through.

Now that I think back to my 43DS I had a small chartplotter installed and tihink that it had a hockey-puck like antenna which was not put outside put taped to the underside of the deck behind the instrument panel (as was the radio antenna for the car stereo radio) and, while I rarely used the chart plotter I did ascertain that it worked and got a fix.
If you plan on upgrading to a SSB sometime in the future then putting in a waterproof through-hull for wires now would be worth it, but I'd be loathe to put a hole into the deck if I could avoid it.