How bout this one?

[charlie_the_tuna]

and what does waas mean?

http://www.boatersworld.com/product/...-chartplotters

[tsubaki]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAAS
Same as the Lowrance stuff.
Thing I like about it is the internal antenna.
Last year about this time they were about $100 more, glad to see them comming down!!

[macojoe]

For $400 you have options!!

Check what Garmin has? When you are looking you want color, sunlight view, and WAAS system!

[csvencer]

I saw the Northstar 538i when I was looking and it seems like a sweet deal for a discontinued product.
http://www.hayestrading.com/storefro...d=10165&dfid=1

Best part is the unit has built in fuel monitoring software, you just need to add the probe for a couple bucks and you are done. Don't know too much about navman/northstar but everyone that has them seems to like their gear.

-Svence

[csvencer]

Originally Posted by charlie_the_tuna

and what does waas mean?

http://www.boatersworld.com/product/...-chartplotters

and check here..
http://www.manventureoutpost.com/mar...=shopping_cart

$335

-Svence

[spareparts]

if you get a chance to operate a gps unit like you want in a boat before you buy it, its worth the effort. I just wasted a ton of time with one of my customers that just bought a new 27 ft cabin boat last July. The boat came with a Ray Marine( usually good stuff, we sell alot of the big stuff) RC435 GPS. He bought the navionics gold card for it, loaded with info. Everything was fine untill he started usuaing the boat, he kept calling me telling me the unit was malfunctioning. The first unit was going blank while it was sitting still and was not giving acurate heading information, no problem, got a new one from the boat manufacture, second one acted up differntly, but still screwed up(bad batch I assume, that happens with all manufactures) I call Raymarine, get a new one(different batch) works great, but the customer keeps complaing about the screen blinking. I check it out, works fine with me at the dock, carry the boat out, sure enough, it starts to blink. What its doing is rewritting the info on the screen based on your position. I could change the headiong as little as 10 degrees and it would rewrite(takes about 10 seconds to do). I changed the scren setup to coarse view rather than heading, now the boat moves on the screen rather than the screen moving around the boat. Does OK, now it will only rewrite when turning more than 30 degrees, or when your run off the screen. I normally operate on North up, to me its easier( its like reading a chart, i still use them also), especially when off shore with no land mass or object to use as a reference. With north up, it does ok, especially if you zoom out a bit, but the customer, like most boaters, wanted heading up. Long story getting longer here. I replaced the Raymarine unit with a Garmin unit of the same size, it runs twice as fast as the Ray unit did, has a seamless screen while running course up or heading up(doesn't rewrite, just keeps going), smaller display, but overall, nicer unit. Point I'm trying to make is, let someone else be the tester, find someone who has a unit simular to what you want, try it out on a boat if posible, you never know what little things that will irritate you about a unit till you try it. And playing with the unit while its sitting in the display at Boaters World will not neccessarily tell you the whole story

[reelapeelin]

Originally Posted by spareparts

if you get a chance to operate a gps unit like you want in a boat before you buy it, its worth the effort. I just wasted a ton of time with one of my customers that just bought a new 27 ft cabin boat last July. The boat came with a Ray Marine( usually good stuff, we sell alot of the big stuff) RC435 GPS. He bought the navionics gold card for it, loaded with info. Everything was fine untill he started usuaing the boat, he kept calling me telling me the unit was malfunctioning. The first unit was going blank while it was sitting still and was not giving acurate heading information, no problem, got a new one from the boat manufacture, second one acted up differntly, but still screwed up(bad batch I assume, that happens with all manufactures) I call Raymarine, get a new one(different batch) works great, but the customer keeps complaing about the screen blinking. I check it out, works fine with me at the dock, carry the boat out, sure enough, it starts to blink. What its doing is rewritting the info on the screen based on your position. I could change the headiong as little as 10 degrees and it would rewrite(takes about 10 seconds to do). I changed the scren setup to coarse view rather than heading, now the boat moves on the screen rather than the screen moving around the boat. Does OK, now it will only rewrite when turning more than 30 degrees, or when your run off the screen. I normally operate on North up, to me its easier( its like reading a chart, i still use them also), especially when off shore with no land mass or object to use as a reference. With north up, it does ok, especially if you zoom out a bit, but the customer, like most boaters, wanted heading up. Long story getting longer here. I replaced the Raymarine unit with a Garmin unit of the same size, it runs twice as fast as the Ray unit did, has a seamless screen while running course up or heading up(doesn't rewrite, just keeps going), smaller display, but overall, nicer unit. Point I'm trying to make is, let someone else be the tester, find someone who has a unit simular to what you want, try it out on a boat if posible, you never know what little things that will irritate you about a unit till you try it. And playing with the unit while its sitting in the display at Boaters World will not neccessarily tell you the whole story

What's Raymarine sayin' about that unit rewriting?...is that a normal operating function of that machine?...

[THEFERMANATOR]

Since I didn't see the answer to TUNAs initial question. WAAS stands for wide area augmentation system. When GPS first came out it worked off of 4 satelites and was only accurate to about 500 feet on a GOOD day. Then they came out with GPS that used land based towers to increase the accuracy. WAAS came out later on and it allowed the units to read up to 12 satelites to get the accuracy down to 10 feet roughly.

[spareparts]

Ray said that was normal, too much information without enough internal memory. It might have been better if we switched to a lesser card, but that particular unit was slow. I've used c and e series units, and they are nice, they run seemless, with great ersponse time, just expensive, but keep in mind, that ray 435 was over $1000. The replacement Garmin was about the same. Way too much money for me to play with

[Stillrunning]

I have that same unit but mine has sonar/fishfinder. I like the unit but I'm not very good with those things so I get about 10% usage of what it can really do. Its is made by Lowrance and if I'm correct the difference in the Eagle v/s the Lowr. is that the Eagle does not work with other stuff in the boat. Like having it hooked up with your VHF and having your location sent out with a distress call. My unit went bad after 2 years and a year out of warranty but they warranteed the unit anyways. So I was very pleased with their customer service. Add another $100 for you local chip.