The International Cessna^® 170 Association

I know some few of you have a Lowrance GPS so I am hoping to get some suggestions (excluding tossing it) from you. I have a 2000c unit---has been a good one with very few complaints. Its data base isn't updatable any longer, but has preformed well despite that issue. Now when I power up the unit it goes through its usual sequence and at some point a partial page comes up advising not to rely upon the unit as my primary navigational aid (they sure had a lot of confidence in the product didn't they I know, its the lawyers ). I am supposed to push the exit botton and its ready to navigate. Problem is that page won't exit so the unit is unusable. For some time now by the time I have done my run up the unit will delete the "page" and work normally. More recently I am in the air for 5-10 minutes before it starts working, which is unacceptable. I have taken the unit home so it could be in a warm place to see if that had any effect--none. Put it in the freezer--no effect. Wondering if anyone might have a "fix it" suggestion.

Moving closer to that iPad Mini

Frank, could this be an internal battery problem?

John, it shouldn't (?) be as I have the unit wired into the aircraft buss & have used it at home both on its internal batteries (4-AA"s) and with a AC pwr supply and the unit doesn't change with any of the pwr options.

Frank, I have the same unit as yours and have really liked it but recently have been having trouble with the buttons not working. I tried the suggestions on the Lowrance site with no help. It usually starts working again after running for a while. Unfortunately, it is the two buttons I use most that are effected (exit,find). I too think there is a iPad mini in my future.

Yea Karl, I think it is an issue with those same two buttons on mine and I don't know if there is anything that can be done to correct the issue since they are a discontinued and likely no longer supported item. If mine gets to where it won't eventually start working I will probably open it up and see what's there, but its doubtful someone like me can correct the problem.

Frank

170C wrote:John, it shouldn't (?) be as I have the unit wired into the aircraft buss & have used it at home both on its internal batteries (4-AA"s) and with a AC pwr supply and the unit doesn't change with any of the pwr options.

Frank, I was thinking of the internal clock battery not the power supply batteries.

Two possible things come to mind.

1. The internal battery that remembers it's last location and tracks time. If that's dead, it has to go thru a full ground up satellite discovery sequence and figure out where on Earth it is. In the older units that can take several minutes.

2. The projected maps of where to expect the satellites to be is so far out of date that it can't extrapolate positions since last powered on anymore. Similar to #1 but for other reasons. Still has to fully re-discover.

3. The antenna is bad and the satellite signals are degraded. There should be a diagnostic page that shows satellites and strength.

As long as it can eventually discover its position, you should be OK but there will come a day when it doesn't know about the new satellites and can't get a fix anymore. It's kinda like car navigation...not much use if the roads change.

Once a company stops providing software updates to a device (specially GPS) it's only a matter of time before they become paperweights

I agree w/ the paperweight. However, I also have a Magellan 5001 (?) panel mount unit that I purchased in 1994 and while it hasn't been able to be updated in quite a number of years, it still works as well as the day I got it with the exception of the database being old.

My 2000c was doing the same thing for a while. Then, one day it started working fine again. Gremlins!!!! That said, I use it but am looking to buy the garmin Bluetooth for my iPad in the near future