After hearing about Spotty's rather amazing 259km effort at Rye last weekend, it got to wondering why my GT-11 recorded only several km the same day.

Ok, i'm not even in the ballpark of spotty-distance, but I had a lot of dropouts that day and am wondering if there is something to prevent this.

Do i need to leave it sitting on the sand for 10 minutes before i go out? And do i select "long" or "short" when it asks me about "Distance" when it loads up? I just use the software it came with from Dr Tom.

Any advice for a GPS novice?

In practise it wont matter if you choose "long" or not.

You should however:
- turn it on, then leave it on your board as you rig your sail (ie about 10 mins)
- make sure it is not "down the front of your wetsuit" or something similar, ie: some people wear it around their neck... dont do that -> the water in/on your wetsuit acts as a very good signal-block.
- wear it on your wrist or upper arm (or on your helmet - but that makes it hard to read.)
- make sure it is in an aquapac or something else water tight.
- for good measure, you can put them in "Glad zip-lock" sandwich bag, just in case you forget to close your aquapac.

Forgot to mention - make sure your settings are correct:
- min speed about 2 knots
- use the "on" setting rather than the "on-fix" setting.
- log data to both the card and to the SD card

And its worth while using a recent version of the firmware - you can find the version number as one of the options in the settings screen.