Electronic Navigation
 

What are people using these days on the Big Lake for electronic navigation? Last year I used an older Garmin GPSMap 172C with a Blue Chart data card of Winni from 2007. The chart was not as detailed as my Florida charts and the Garmin screen was not too easy to read in direct sunlight, so it was pretty much useless.
So what's a good setup that is readable & detailed for Winnipesaukee navigation? Thanks

I have a Garmin EchoMap Plus 63CV which is new to me this year and primarily bought for fishing, however, the chartplotter is really nice, has all the nav aids overlaid on a topo map of the bottom. There are two map modes - a very detailed topo color coded at the 40' or less in 10' increments fishing map with nav aids or a less detailed topo navigation map that has all the nav aids with all the hazard areas highlighted in blue. For general navigation the fishing map is probably a little to "busy" from a visual standpoint.

It's easy to read day or night, in fact it has both a day a night display mode. This isn't a portable unit.

I haven't even gotten into all the features it can do but out of the box I find it's pretty easy to operate and is extremely accurate.

Fish finder works awesome too. Packs a lot of features in a 'relatively' inexpensive unit.

Garmin, Raymarine, and Simrad (Lowrance) all make some good compact GPS units now. The Garmin echoMAP series, Raymarine Dragonfly, and Simrad GO series are all solid options at a decent price.

C-MAP makes an ok chart for Winni. The Navionics is far more detailed. I don't have any experience with the Lighthouse maps to say how good or not they are.

I've seen several new gearcases get swapped out from hitting rocks already this season. A good GPS and set of charts is always a good thing to have, even for those that "know" the lake well.

Thanks, its all good information, much appreciated.

Thanks to this forum, I ordered and received a C-Map card for my Northstar 660/Navman 6600. I had been up to the lake a couple of weeks ago on the Monday after the first heat wave and it was impressive knowing that the chart was based on the Bizer chart-that I had learned about from this forum.

I was also glad that when I was choosing a GPS/Sonar for my boat back in 2007 that as I wanted a unit that would interface with my Mercury and Smartcraft, that I had chosen the Northstar so the C-Card would work perfectly with the GPS-and it does.