I just purchased one of these and so far am fairly happy with it.

I have a question for the GPS nuts. It is supposed to take the Navionics gold maps, but I don't think that these have inland waters for Australia. Does anyone know if they do or don't? I am not real keen on forking out 400 bucks for maps that are no good to me.

Also, does anyone know what map format they read? I have tried making my own using some old Garmin Maps and some other maps that I have. When I save them as LCM files, the fish finder won't pick up the images on the map - it will only show place names.

Any suggestions?

I have the same unit and love it
My mate brought a Elite 5/gps model with the Navionics gold maps! No inland maps mate ,save your money!
Sorry can't help you on the rest Budgie..

Thanks Merv.....I figures as much

Budge,

have a word with Scott "Fullboar" hes done a fair bit of mucking around with GPS maps on his lowrance and knows a bit about the formats etc, i think if i recall correctly lowrance use a proprietory format and you may require a program that converts the different file formats to get your garmin maps into lowrance specs.

Thanks Donkey......I am using a program that is supposed to convert them to lowrance format, unless I am missing something

There is a program called "gpsmapedit" that is a free down load that will help make the maps you want.
Then you will need a lcm builder to turn the file to a lcm. File.

Its a bit of mucking around at first to get the maps to look the way you want.

thanks Boz

I have been using mapedit - which is a free version of gpsmapedit with a lcm builder built in....it just won't work. I might have to find a copy of gpsmapedit instead and try that

I use the free version to and works fine for me.

You might need to my sure you got your settings right.
Check that it is set to Lowrance in "Map Properties" for a start.

What part won't work for you?

Can you draw a map at all?

yeh have the properties set to "Lowrance"

I am trying to convert some other maps I have. They save OK as lcm files, but when I open them in the fish finder, only place names show up, no graphics. I must be missing a step somewhere - just gotta figure it out

This could be one of to things.

It could be the the levels are not good.

Or when you use some of the lines and point etc they will not come up when on your sounder. For example a dirt road might not show up on your sounder, but if you change it to a road it will.

What type of map are you trying to convert?