Lowrance cheat sheet

[ChaseTruck754]

The Eagle units (made by Lowrance) are the cheaper, "fish finder" type line and work the same as the stuff guys use in the race trucks.

[AussieRod]

[
Paul, Lowrance doesnt sell the ground units here, only fish finders. VERY few racers use GPS, as its not allowed in our off road racing here. We are forced to navigate from maps and pace / chase notes. Thats how far they are behind here.

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First of all the Lowrance units sold in AU are exactly the same units they offer in the US.
Maybe we have misled you. All Lowrance units with exceptions below are marine units.
Here are the discontinued products you would find most useful. You buy them off the web.
http://www.lowrance.com/Products/Legacy ... Globalmap/
All these units work as a fish finder with the required transponder. In fact my last boat trip had a GM5” installed and I put in my .lcm card and bingo all the ground info around the lake was there. Then I switched from ”map” to whatever the transponder mode was and there were the fish and the underwater depth and terrain we used to avoid grounding.
XOG is a true ground unit that is compatible with our ground .lcm maps and our .usr trails. Discontinued and hard to find new/unused ones. PCI Race radios has new ones in stock.
Ifinder is a hand held works like the Global map series that are discontinued. Discontinued easier to find new/unused units.
Endura is another touch screen hand held for hiking. Forget about it.
Elite is another one that has defective software. Maybe they will fix it ??
All current HDS units $$ are true marine units with all the fish finder capabilities work fine just like the GM units.
If you buy a fish finder unit I am not sure that it will work as we like it to. Find a boat guy and play with his fish finder.
PW

Yes, all understood, however, there are NO ground / topo Lowrance maps available here, other than offshore and SOME river systems. I have emailed / called Lowrance in Sydney and discussed using one as a offroad type GPS, like in Baja, etc. and thats the answer I got. However, he did say that IF I can find a compatible mapping software that will interface with the Lowrance unit I choose, then it would just mean going out, mapping (prerunning) the area I want, then loading the mapping points to the Lowrance and using it that way. Keep in mind, I am not a techno-geek, and my experience with the Lowrance is very minimal. I would need to buy a unit, learn how to use it, then get someone knowledgeable to teach me the ins and out, cheats, etc so i can do all this on my own. Remember, I am in a country where we are FAR behind you guys in this field, so finding anything out is hard, at best.

[AussieRod]

I just found a local dealer in town, wouldnt ya know it.
I going down there now to pick their brains about the Lowrance.

[PaulW]

Since you are so hesitant you should look into the laptop with scanned maps. Any old hand held GPS would be the engine. That system works fine and allows a non techee to deal with a pretty good solution. One guy I know uses a very old laptop mounted to the back of his Bronco console and driving a low end 10" flat screen with a home made mount on the dash. He has a mouse he uses on his console . The Magellan GPS engine is mounted on the dash beside the screen.
Alternatively you can use an IPad exactly the same way and eliminate the laptop, but the cost would be higher. What the guy does is using his desktop he scanns images from local maps in sections then he copies the images to the mem of the laptop. The guy even has Google earth pictures in teh selecte local area that he uses to navigate. Sounds complicated, but that guy is not a techee and he got instructions off the web. The only disadvantage is what ever engine you use probably wont work like a Lowrance and all the help you will get will be for other brands.
The only issue I have with that setup is that the guy uses inferior maps and I use custom maps with all the roads and trails I need. Its the pits to follow him because he gets lost because the roads on his maps are very inaccurate.
Search race dezert for threads using the IPad for a truck mounted GPS. Plenty of info to get going.
Having said all the above. Why not buy a Lowrance I suggested off the web and have at it? And you can do a lot with no background maps by just making .usr tracks yourself. When your buddies see what you are doing then you can share tracks.
PW

[AussieRod]

I will probably do just that, Paul, buy a Lowrance, fit it up and start making tracks of my own. I did find a pommy GPS program simmilar to run on a PC, and I can buy a 10" touch screen cheap to fit on the dash, and use a laptop behind the seat to power it. Now I have a direction, I will be looking for a Lowrance in the US on my next visit, maybe a GlobalMap840 or or whatever. Its not that I am hesitant, just that I dont want to spend money twice to get a result.

[PaulW]

Can someone post the XOG specific cheat sheet?
PaulW

[Nick]

Can someone post the XOG specific cheat sheet?
PaulW

I'm getting one from pci. I'll post it when i get it.

[PaulW]

Reviewing what I said last time here is my latest tips.
Warning.. I doubt if any of this info applies to the HDS series. It is applicable to most all the Global Map and iFinder seres GPS

1) After great difficulty moving .usr files from various Lowrance GPSs to other Lowrance units. Here is the fix per their Tech support. If one has a third party LCM background map on the SD card saving the track file will result in corrupted .usr file and will not load on other Lowrance units. The fix is to have a separate sd card for your .usr files.
It is OK to create the track/WP with the 3rd party LCM files installed in the GPS.
3rd party Baja .LCM maps are created by Bicimapa.com and resold by PCI Race Radios and LB maps for both Garmin and Lowrance.
Another 3rd party is Murdock. So far only ORW sells the chip. By far it is the best of all when compared with Bicimapa and MapCreate. I suppose thre are other maps , but I have not found any yet.
Sometimes my 7200C acts up with the ORW chip and once I had to do a hard reset to get it to work with the chip installed. I have not had issues since. For sure the ORW chip has a huge amount of data so boot up is very slow. Of course one can just not put it into the GPS and then you get instant boot. Then load you file and then put in the ORW chip and all is well. (still slow but you can see your track.
BTW, reset is the pits because you have to redo all you custom settings and I usually forget an important one and have to stop and figure it out.

2) If you ever want to put your track onto a Goggle Map image then it is important to delete all the artifacts from the GPS before creating a track. Here is the proper sequence;
menu, delete my icons
Menu, Menu, My trails, options - remove check for "update active trail"
exit, Delete all trails, yes, exit
System setup, Delete all my waypoints -yes
Exit back to the map
Now when you get to the start of the place to begin your trail. you will have removed artifacts such a pixels that Google will connect to your trail. A very good thing.

Now to start a clean trail do the usual actions.create a new trail.
My Trails, New trail verify visible & active. Go to "maximum points" and enter 9999. (this will prevent overwriting your trail when you exceed the default of 2000. This wont affect the file size because you only get what your GPS creates.
Go to options and check "update active trail"

Go to trip calculator and reset trip and make trip active. This will allow time and distance and other parameters to start at the beginning for a trip record.
Use a threshold of 1 MPH then when driving or walking the trip will be recorded, but stop recording when speed drops below 1mph. The IFinder trip calculator menu is located at
Menu, Menu, Utilities. Find it on Menu, Menu on other units.

Begin your trail creation.

3) If you have a battery powered GPS make sure you have fresh batteries installed. If you plug your GPS into the car power plug make sure it is always on and the ignition switch does not turn off/on the power. If your GPS uses AA batteries spend the $$ and get the lithium batteries for very long life. If you use the cheaper batteries test them before you start for full voltage or just put in fresh ones.
Reason:
If power is lost the GPS will terminate the trail you were creating and start a new one. For some units it will just turn off the GPS. This action required one to start up the unit and delete the newly created trail and verify the trail that was interrupted is active etc. Sometime low battery will result in a dim screen which has to be corrected to view by hitting "Pwr" (quick push)
Guys using vehicle power on a AA battery unit like the iFinder need to have the batteries installed and they need to be fresh. Then when the receptacle falls out and you loose vehicle power the GPS wi keep working and will not shutoff.

4) Only buy name brand SD cards. I only use San Disk some brands are not tested and some are not made to SD standard. You only need a small card for .USR files since they take up so little space. I have had good luck with Kingston brand.
Did you know the Lowrance units must have 2Gig cards or smaller. The GPS will not work with larger cards. Buy them on the Internet for about $5.

5) Resets when you discover your memory is full or you unit acts up:

Reset GlobalMap 4900M, 7200C
Soft Reset:
1. Turn unit OFF
2. Press and hold the PAGES key
3. Press and hold the PWR key
4. Release both buttons when the USA map appears
5. Soft Reset (Does not delete GPS Data)
Hard Reset
1. Turn unit OFF
2. Press and hold the ZIN&ZOUT Keys at the same time
3. Press and hold the PWR key
4. Release both buttons when the USA map appears
5. Hard Reset (Deletes stored GPS Data such as Waypoints and trails and your custom settings)
Reset iFinder ExpeditionC
Soft Reset:
1. Turn unit OFF
2. Press and hold the PAGES key
3. Press and hold the PWR key
4. Release both buttons when the USA map appears
5. Soft Reset (Does not delete GPS Data)
Hard Reset
Turn unit OFF
1. Press and hold the ZIN&ZOUT Keys at the same time
2. Press and hold the PWR key
3. A tone will sound
4. When tone is sounding, release buttons and immediately press and hold the FIND key.
5. While pressing FIND, a higher tone will sound
6. Hard Reset (Deletes stored GPS Data such as Waypoints and trails and your custom settings)

6) HOW TO VIEW & EDIT TRAILS ON YOUR PC
Download free “trackmaker”. It comes with a simple background map which will work fine.
What you can do with Trackmaker :
a) display your .USR file (or many other formats),
b) save it as a Google KML file,
c) edit your file,
d) save your edited file with the same or new name,
e) save your track & Wp info to another format like Garmin or Magellan & many others.
f) convert a Google KML file you made with your mouse to other formats
Trackmaker is intuitive and simple to use. I have had to edit files for others to use since my track had backups and wrong turns that I drove back and fixed. Then I used Trackmaker to remove the screw-ups and false starts.