gps unit questions...

[nascarjonb]

Hello fellow grady lovers,

I own a smaller grady then most of you that fish erie, i have a spirit 18 foot center console. I have recently paid the boat off and I am looking to update my electronics. I am looking for something that is no more then 500ish, needs to have gps, fish finder, depth sounder, is possable down imaging. I have found a 2 possabilities but im not sure how good the mapping is on erie. my boat is moored on a canal on sandusky bay and quality, somewhat acurate charting is a must.

Here is what i have found recently, any one have any sugestions???

Lowrance- Elite 5 CHIRP

Humming Bird HELIX 5 DL GPS- (will have to buy a great lakes chip from what i have seen)

not sure if im looking in the right direction.
thanks!!!

 

[782 aero]

I have the fresh water fish finder and gps Garmin and love it

 

[seasick]

Hello fellow grady lovers,

I own a smaller grady then most of you that fish erie, i have a spirit 18 foot center console. I have recently paid the boat off and I am looking to update my electronics. I am looking for something that is no more then 500ish, needs to have gps, fish finder, depth sounder, is possable down imaging. I have found a 2 possabilities but im not sure how good the mapping is on erie. my boat is moored on a canal on sandusky bay and quality, somewhat acurate charting is a must.

Here is what i have found recently, any one have any sugestions???

Lowrance- Elite 5 CHIRP

Humming Bird HELIX 5 DL GPS- (will have to buy a great lakes chip from what i have seen)

not sure if im looking in the right direction.
thanks!!!

If you want/need to look at both sonar and navigation information on a split screen, you might find a 5 inch display is a non optimal option. You may be OK with two splits configured, one with mostly nav date and just a small sonar window for getting to your fishing spots and a second pre-configed split with a larger sonar split and a small mapping split. I do that on one of my boats with a single MFD.
Go to a marine store and do some hands on playing around with the demo models.I have a small boat that I equipped with two 5 inch displays, one for mapping and the other for sonar. That said, as I get older the 5 inch screens are harder to read when cruising.
I am not familiar with Hummingbird, being a Garmin and Lowrance person. I find my Garmin menus to be more intuitive than my Lowrance menus. Every spring, I have to do a refresh of my brain to remember how to get to certain options on the Lowrance or to adjust splits

One thing I should mention is that I upgraded my mapping software a while back on a first gen Lowrance HDS with new Navionics chip. Although that unit works, it takes forever to boot and load the mapping software and some map refresh functions are quite slow. My point is that is you need to use an optional mapping chip, see if you can play with a demo unit that has the software.