My navigation has been working perfectly, however today it wouldn't pick up more than one satellite. It was very cloudy outside. After driving for about 15 minutes, it slowly began picking up more satellites but still didn't acquire as many as it usually does. My question is...does the weather (clouds) affect the antenna's ability to read the satellites? If not, does anything else affect it?

 

Clouds should have no effect on GPS reception. Remember, GPS was originally designed as an all-weather navigation system for the military and is a pretty robust system.

 

Hmmm...ok, maybe something else is affecting it, I just don't know what. This is the second time it has happened and both days were very cloudy so I just figured that was it. Thanks for the info.

 

My old Garmin GPRSII handheld (no maps, just OS grid ref, plotted course etc) was definitely affected by cloud cover and could fail to acquire without a clear view of the sky. That was the old 8 satellite technology though. I don't think the modern 12 sat systems are affected too much by clouds. I was playing with a TomTom Bluetooth GPS receiver recently and it even acquired my location in my office!