Yep, that’s right. After doing quite some detours and swearing that I seem to be incapable of finding a place somewhere further away, I’ve finally got myself a Navigation system.

I already had some navigation aids, even TomTom. But it was always installed on a PDA using a Bluetooth GPS receiver. IF it worked, it worked great. But most of the time, there was more hassle than benefit. Usually one of the batteries was empty (Receiver or PDA). If that wasn’t the case, the receiver was so disoriented, that I had to drive about 20 km until it finally got a lock. For long distance drives, thats not so much of a problem. Usually one of the batteries will die once I get anywhere near my destination.

Apart from the navigation part, I was fed up with using wired headsets for my mobile phone while driving. Luckily, todays navigation devices offer hands-free phone operation using bluetooth and integrated microphone and speaker.

Finally, i decided to buy a TomTom GO 930T because it offers me all the things I want as explained above, and it even features TMCpro! Luckily my local dealer had one in stock 🙂

After picking up the nav I was eager to test it right away. Still on the car park in front of my dealer, I had to install the nav so i could test-drive it home. The packaging is of good quality and the packaging system looks like someone gave it quite some thought. The suction-cup arm fixing it to the windscreen is sweet and sleek, you hardly see it behind the nav.

The nav is powered through a standard USB-C connection and the provided car-charger offers an angled plug so the nav can be placed so far down, that it almost lies on the cockpit. Too bad that the cable is too short. My cigarette-lighter is not next to the ashtray, but between the two front seats under the armrest. I was only able to power the nav with the power cord going right across the cockpit.

Next is the TMCpro antenna. Which is long, very long. It reaches from the lower left corner of the windscreen up the A-Column and across the top just about to the mirror. At least you have 4 suction cups to adhere the cable to the windscreen. The connector is a straight plug which is about 4cm long. Not so sleek as the power-plug.

After having everything set up, its quite a cabling mess in the left corner of my cockpit. I’ll try to move the TMC antenna so it runs across the bottom line of the Windscreen.

Then, the big moment was here. I switched the nav on. And about 10 seconds later it knew exactly where it was. I AM ASTONISHED! Even now while I’m writing this, the Nav gets a quite clear signal from the GPS satellites. And my window and shutters are closed.

I’ll play around a bit and get to know all the functions and gimmicks. Update will follow 🙂