Lowrance or Garmin Combo?

[Lovey80]

Interested to hear all the good punters thoughts on which 10+inch combo to buy.

Navman plotter has just Shit the bed and I'm keep to go a combo and sell off the Furuno Sounder.

Things to consider:

Want to use my current CMAP if possible.
Price
Transducers needed (current Airmar P66)
Touch screens - are they more hassle than worth?

Anyone got experience with both?

[scottar]

Neither of those take Cmap. Lowrance is Navionics and Garmin uses their own so no joy there. What are you hoping to achieve with the sounder - side scan, down scan or deepwater for offshore. If you want anywhere near the performance of the Furuno (FCV620????) without the hassle of a 1kw transducer in deep water, you will need chirp. Touchscreens are a matter of personal preference. Personally I think they are great but some don't like them at all. They make some functions, especially naming waypoints an absolute joy but are less critical for others.

As for brand preference, my personal choice would be Garmin. This is not based on performance - both products will work but in my experience, Garmin are a lot easier to deal with than Navico.

One thing I would recommend you do is try and have a good play with both somewhere. As good as some brands of gear are, some people find the operation of "brand X" totally impossible to nut out and due to the fact that recreational usage can be infrequent end up in a situation where they just about need a manual in hand every time they hit the water. Sit down before you head off and list the things you have done with your current systems over the years - ie - what functions do I actually use, and see how to access them in the new one and decide for yourself which is a better fit for you. Don't get caught up in flashy features that in reality are only great to show your mates over a beer, if the day to day stuff is a PITA.

[Lovey80]

Thanks Scottar,

yes the current sounder is the Furuno 620 with p66.

the combo will be used with my little 5.2KC for offshore between 30-120m depths. So side scan is not an issue.

How ow do I get my marks out of the CMAP and into one of the other two units?

[scottar]

How ow do I get my marks out of the CMAP and into one of the other two units?

Which Navman was it? Does it use a SD card or a "C-card". If it is a C-card unit, it is physically impossible for the machine to write mark files to the chart. If it is a SD card you may have inadvertently copied a user file to the card but it is something you would have had to done - the machine doesn't do it automatically - none of them do. The marks are only stored within the machine itself unless/until the operator tells it to transfer a copy to a suitable storage medium. All this aside, any Navman mark conversions I have been involved with were done by directly downloading the machine using a program such as GPSU using a standard NMEA0183 interface as we were never able to find a conversion program that would read the C-Map file format and hardware was required to suit the C-card if that was what the unit used.

Have you had the Navman checked by anyone to confirm it is the unit and not a power supply issue?

[Lovey80]

Definitely not a power supply issue. The unit turned on but the backlight blew out. I double checked it wasn't in night mode as I could just see the settings if i squinted hard lol.

the chart is a CMAP Orange card not SD. So does that mean I have lost all my marks?

will I have to replace my external GPS antenna also?

[scottar]

Provided the machine can be fired up and read, even if it is only just, it should be able to be hooked up and downloaded provided nothing else has failed at the same time. Where are you located?

The external antenna will either need to be replaced if the new unit comes with one or will be redundant if the new unit has an inbuilt antenna.

Just to add - I wouldn't sell your Furuno until you have used the new unit and decided you are happy with the performance.

[Gr0wler]

Stay with Furuno for your sounder or you WILL be sorry, I know someone who recently went away from Furuno and they wish they hadn't and now want to sell the new gear and go back to Furuno for same soughts of depths.
All depends on your budget though but their are heaps of options out there, I currently have a Simrad NSS12 with 4G radar, Lowrance HDS7 gen 2 touch and a Furuno FCV 585 as my main sounder. I'm upgrading soon and will only be going with Furuno as my fishing is similar depths to yours and with a Furuno I can look at the screen and pick reds in an instant but with chirp would take a loooooong time to be able to confidently pick reds, IMO nothing compares to Furuno sounders thus why majority of pro and commercial fisho's only use Furuno.

[Almako]

How much do you want for the 620?

[The Black Unicorn]

Pretty sure you can get a Cmap card reader. PC Planner? That boating and camping place has some good deals on Lowrance and Garmin runout stuff at the moment. They are doing Lowrance 7" Gen2 button combos for just over $700! Saw some Garmin stuff at Sanctuary cove. Pretty impressive!

[scottar]

PC Planner will, in conjunction with a user data card, allow you to copy your marks to a PC and view them but unless the software has changed (several years since I played with it) it was not a conversion tool to get it into a different format unfortunately. If you were going to stick with a C-Map machine it would probably be worth looking at but not if you are going to change brands to something that uses a different format

[The Black Unicorn]

PC Planner will, in conjunction with a user data card, allow you to copy your marks to a PC and view them but unless the software has changed (several years since I played with it) it was not a conversion tool to get it into a different format unfortunately. If you were going to stick with a C-Map machine it would probably be worth looking at but not if you are going to change brands to something that uses a different format

There is conversion software out there though?

[scottar]

Yes. There are a few different programs that are available. GPSU and GPS Babel are the two that I have primarily utilised but even though they have quite long lists of formats they are compatible with they are not compatible with everything. C-Map have their own format that was typically difficult ( Navman and Furuno were the main brands I was involved with that used C-Map) to get cards to read and convert but by downloading or uploading directly to the units we were able to get around this most times. Some folks who are more computer savvy may have found ways to get C-Map cards to read, convert and load but I never bothered looking into it further once we established it could be done direct

[Lovey80]

So the CMAP card I have here doesn't have my marks on it? Then I'm ####ed because the unit won't light up at all, we'll certainly not enough to read marks and copy all 500 down.

[scottar]

You don't need to copy them down. The screen simply just needs to be able to read enough to select the right settings to get the unit to output the information to a computer. If as you say it is just the backlight, this is doable. Indeed, I have done it before - the failed backlight was a reasonably common Navman issue. So where are you located????

[Lovey80]

I'm on the sunny coast.

ive had a look at the Garmin 1020SX and like the look of it at the price (display model).

Is it worth going the better map?

What tranny do I need to run to get a decent picture with Chirp....?