LOWR ANC E ELEC T RO NI C Stor S y&Photos
BY KEN SAURET
most asked questions
W
hen it comes to electronics, there
are so many types and categories
of questions that can and do come
up that it can be difficult to choose the “most asked” questions. Everything from Menu
questions to Settings questions to GPS questions
to Sonar questions to Waypoint and Trail questions
to Networking questions to various questions about
how to interpret what the unit is trying to tell you.
FROM THE FORUM
I monitor the Lowrance Forum on WesternBass and recently had a PM or “personal message” from a guy in the Lake Charles area of southwest Louisiana. This gentleman indicated that he came to westernbass.com because of the Lowrance Forum. This forum has eight pages of archived questions and answer threads for the users of Lowrance products to read to obtain help in the operation and troubleshooting of any and all Lowrance issues they may have. This is and can be a very valuable resource for the angler who has electronic chart plotter/sonar units on their boats.
With this being said I would like to talk about some of the frequently asked questions that come up. Then after reading this article, please go to the Forums page of this web site and click on the Lowrance Forum and check out a very valuable resource.
The Lowrance forum on westernbass.com is loaded with questions about how to install and run wiring. Comparisons of varying Lowrance models are another popular topic. I believe this to be a very important issue to discuss because most of us want the most value for our money and we want to make the product purchase one time.
There is nothing more disappointing than to spend your hard earned money on a particular unit only to find out after a couple fishing trips that you should have researched and asked more questions
so that you would have chosen the right one the first time. You will see as you read the forum that I always recommend that people do their research and if needed, have some self-discipline, wait a few months and save up the extra dollars needed to get the largest screen they can afford. This is one of the most talked about regrets people have is not waiting a little longer so they could have purchased the next size bigger. The larger the screen seems to correlate to the happier the fisherman. Size does matter!
NMEA
First let’s look at a common question about how a NMEA network is configured to function correctly. The configuration of the NMEA (National Marine Electronics Association) network is pictured. NMEA is commonly pronounced “NEMA”. On the left in this picture there is a GPS antenna, next a remote temperature sensor, the round coil is a 15 foot extension cable connecting the tees from bow to console for example. Next on the network is the Power Node, this tee has the positive and negative wires that give the network power so the GPS antenna will operate for example.
Next to the power node is another tee then an extension cable to another tee. The blank tees would have a Lowrance unit connected to them. In the last tee at each end in the network there is a terminator to complete the network.
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