[Rich]

Winnipesaukee Garmin Users, yesterday I received an email from Garmin which informed me that the U.S LakeVu chart has been finally updated!

I honestly was surprised to hear this news from them. I thought that they stopped updating the G3 charts as all their new products seem to come with the Navionics charts now.

Yesterday I updated the built in G3 map of my EchoMap 73sv UHD. It certainly took some time to complete the process (a few hours), but it was successful!

The new map is "US LakeVu g3 Detail Map v25.0 v2024.0"

And YES! We the black-top and red-top navigational markers have returned! The chart seems usable again!

While I haven't been on the lake yet with it, I did pan around manually and see the colored markers have returned, no more empty white rectangles!

While I was at it. I also updated my firmware to the latest version (27.10)

So you no longer are forced to buy the Navionics chart to fix this issue.

If you have a unit that is still within the 'free chart update' period (I believe one year from the purchase date) I would suggest that you update the built in chart as soon as you can before you lose the ability to have a free update.

Alternatively, if your unit is missing the red-top and black-top navaid markers, perhaps you can plead your case with support that it's dangerous for use for navigating, and they may give you a free or discounted update?

Considering that I originally reported this issue to them about 2 years ago, support gave me a 'special case' free upgrade. I'm a bit disappointed that it took them so long to resolve this issue, but at least it's resolved now.