MacGregorSailors.com

Looking to put a GPS,depth and fishfinder(all in one) on my X. Looking at Garmin 178c. Does anyone have one of these? How is it? what does everyone use out there? Thanks

Here's our 178C. Love it.

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Moe

I use a Garmin 76CS with Blue Charts and the City Select auto-route loaded. Since it's portable, I use it in the car to get me where I'm going, I take it on biz trips to get around (and find hotels and food) in other cities, and it works on the boat too. I have a separate Raymarine unit for depth/temp/water speed (it was less $$ than Garmin).

Pictures..
http://brownz.com/instruments-2.jpg
http://brownz.com/finder_wires_2.jpg

The 178C is also a nice combined unit, it's just stuck on the boat though and can't be used in the car (as far as I'm aware) too. It does have a larger screen than the portable 76cs.

Moe, Is the in hull transducer a better way to go than transom mount And Nemo brings up an interesting question. Can this unit also be used in car. Just curious. Be nice to do double duty. Also what about antenna? Thanks again for your knowledge.

The 178C can be used in the car with MetroGuide North America. However, it has a marine basemap instead of the Auto-Routing Highway basemap, and can't do routing or on-the-fly rerouting, nor does it have turn-by-turn voice prompting. You do routing for it on the PC with MapSource. The smaller screen (but larger than the 76), non-sounder GPSMAP 276 can do these things with the automotive kit.

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Moe

I too have the 178C and LOVE IT!!!

I shoot mine through the hull with no problems.


Rich

I can tell you the internal antenna works fine under a cloth bimini. Others say it can work under a fiberglass hardtop. I've never tried it, but reports here say it doesn't work very well in a Mac cabin. I don't know.

With a transom mount transducer, you can get temperature readings, and if you buy the 178C without a transducer, you can also get a transom mount transducer with a paddlewheel to get speed over water... as long as marine growth hasn't fouled it. Finally, the transom mount transducer doesn't experience the reduction in range you get from shooting through the hull. This is primarily an issue if you fish in very deep waters.

The reason I went with the in-hull transducer on the Mac is because its transom is already clutttered by rudders on both sides, ballast vent on one side and swim ladder on the other. As with the paddlewheel transom transducer, if you want the in-hull, you'll have to order the 178C without transducer and order one separately.

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Moe

I am using my 178C for a year now being on the water almost every weekend and it works very well. Installed the transom mount transducer with plummers putty in the bilge and it works perfect through hull.

However, I just installed three weeks ago my 178C on my CAL 27. As I do not have a bimini on this one it makes reading the display quite challenging specially with the sun from the back (we have 350+ sunny days a year). Decided to install some type of shade around the instrument till I get a new bimini.

We have a 168, which is the predecessor of the 178. We like it very much, so I expect the 178 will be at least as good if not better.

I have the 76CS, which I bought since it had more initials and options than the 76 or 76C...got a good deal on ebay last year.

I like being able to pull it off the boat for theft prevention as well as travelling with it on business...

OK - I expensed it too....

The small screen problem disappears when it is interfaced to laptop by USB.....

Battery life is all day on 2 NiMH AA cells, last thanksgiving I hooked it into the DC bus with a pedestal connection, an underdeck connection, and it also talks to my two VHF DSC radios telling them where I am, in case I have to transmit a mayday.....

The S designation means it has a barometric sensor for pressure readings as well as a mag compass on board. Its cool to use the sensor on planes to see how low the pressure gets - check your local laws before using...NOT!!

The 178C is also easily removed for theft prevention. A slight twist of the cable lock ring, unplug the cable, loosen the tilt knob and lift it off the bracket. We don't leave it in the open Whaler when docked for lunch, etc. My wife carries a padded shoulder bag and we take the GPS and any other expensive items with us. Will probably lock it in the Mac's cabin.
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Moe

Garmin GPS units are fine but there are other choices out there that seem to be better to me
One would be
http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/st ... storeNum=3
Or the smaller version 3500c
Another one to look at would be
http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/st ... storeNum=3

What I like about these and other units is you can use diff. software from outside vendors.

The garmin your pretty much stuck with whatever Garmin offers.
The other consideration would be viewing. The garmin is harder to read in sunlight then the two units above

All units sold today will work fine and detail mapping is better then what we would need for navigating. I mean I dont really need to use a GPS to get to Catalina from my home port. But some of the information on the charters gives locations of wrecks or shipping zones.

You also stated an interest for combo fish finder. Lowrance has some of the best but my leaning is for separate units as I like the whole screen better then a split screen.

Im also looking at the Lowrance for the radar interface that will be coming out soon for it. And the new nauticpath software you can use with the Lowrance unit as this would give all US coastal waters and the Great Lakes for 99 dollars. Your garmin or any other software will run you up to 199 per region.

It seems the new software would be great for people that trailer their boats to diff. locations instead of having to buy a diff region every time you go some where new.

To each their own, I use a garmin hand held thats 10 years old and it works great. When I get my new unit the hand held will be a back up.

Im in the same boat as you I have an older Lowrance LMS 350 for my power boat that was bought new a number of years ago and the thing has always worked fine, but time has made that state of the art unit for its time old and outdated. So Im shopping for a new unit and I like the choices out there. And the prices seem to be coming down.

Another thing to look into would be easy to use. The standard horizon above has a joy stick and is really slick, the Lowrance uses an arrow pad like most other units out there. But the two above can be read in sunlight better then most units out there. Plus the lowrance seems to be 200 dollars cheaper then a garmin of the same size.

Foot note to my above post.

The Mapping GPS units are great and lots of fun playing with them but for the most part they are a toy for entertainment as we never in our little boats go anywhere we havent studied first on some paper chart or internet. Right? I guess what im trying to say is unless you regularly go to far away places that are not familiar to you the GPS units are an added tool not a primary one. The charts how to read them and dead reckoning should be the first thing we learn before attempting any kind of adventure outside our local bay. Also the Government can at will make your unit tell you wrong info, This is a security thing and we all should know this. Know where your going Know how to get there and know enough about the area to do it with out a GPS. Im concerned that with the availability of these high power high tech units that we will get some people to try and use them for primary navigation, Big mistake.

When Karen and I got our little sail boat we took her out to break the engine in. we went to Long Beach from Marina Del rey Now thats an easy trip just around the corner 20 some odd miles.
I know Long Beach well enough to be comfortable day night fog whatever as I have fished every inch of it for 20 some odd years. But what I forgot was we had to go back to MDR, thats were our boat stays. I never entered MDR harbor in the daytime let alone at night. No GPS just a little paper map and my compass. Long story short at night the coast line is a whole diff. world even with the LAX airport near by there are so many lights its very difficult to find a small harbor entrance. We did and GPS would have been a great aid but I would not trust a GPS just blindly doing this. Plus the seas were not nice to us. Although Im sorta bragging a little here the truth is I was concerned and was very cautious.
That night in my little Mac gave me the feeling she was a good boat and we would have a swell life together. Bad seas a little lost and the little Mac brought us home.

The major vendors of electronic cartography for dedicated chartplotters are two Italian companies, Navionics and C-Map, and an American company, Garmin. All sell cartography in "regions." The price of a "region" depends upon its size. A really large region can retail for over $1,000. When it comes to the major vendor's marine cartography:

If you buy Furuno, you can chose a Navionics or C-Map version and are then "pretty much stuck" with that.
If you buy Northstar, Raymarine, or Eagle/Lowrance/Hummingbird, you're "pretty much stuck" with Navionics.
If you buy Interphase, JRC, Navman, Si-Tex, or Simrad, you're "pretty much stuck" with C-Map.
If you buy Magellan, you're "pretty much stuck" with Magellan's BlueNav charts, a version of Navionics.
If you buy Garmin, you're "pretty much stuck" with Garmin's BlueCharts

Each vendor of cartography has advantage in different areas. For example, if you're in Guam, you buy hardware that uses C-Map.

Now if you really believe Lowrance's "NauticPath" card is in the same league, and gives you all of the chart detail, in all of the other vendors' regions of the US East and West coasts, Hawaii, Gulf coast, Great Lakes, Alaska, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, for the price everyone else, including their supported Navionics, charges for one standard sized region... you could make the case Lowrance gives you a choice.

If real choice of cartography, especially "official" cartography, and a lot of it free, is important to you, do a search on the word PPC by author Duane Dunn, Allegro.

I strongly agree that in unfamiliar areas paper charts and dead-reckoning should be used as a backup, but the reality is they haven't been used as a primary navigational tool for recreational boating for years. I wouldn't blow GPS off as "toys" to be played with, or "entertainment." I suppose if you've never had a chartplotting GPS, or used one of the major cartography vendor's products, they might seem that way.

Anyway, here's the GPS178C at GPSDiscount.com. I've purchased more than once from them and had good service. Since playmaker appears to be in the Tampa area, I've selected cartography based on that.
Here's what is covered by the cartography:

Preprogrammed MUS505L card: Gulf of Mexico Large, Brownsville TX to Key West & Dry Tortugas

OR

Unlock Region: AMR-US011 Crystal River to Key West & Dry Tortugas

Unlock Region: AMR-US012-6 New Orleans to Bradenton (I've used this one in the Pensacola/Orange Beach area)

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Moe

Aya26 - thanks for a good post

"The prudent mariner will never rely on a single source of information for navigation"

On my infamous Ericson 32 Cleveland trip a couple of years back (6-8 foot, peaking at 10 foot waves) we bagged our first leg and had to come into Cleveland Harbor. Waves were coming in from the Northeast as we approached the harbor from the West.

We had charts and a whole bunch of GPSs, but realised if we missed the entrance, we would have to come about and risk getting pooped...

The GPS told us "where we were" but that wasnt good enough for me. From 2 miles out visual ID of the harbor entrance wasnt possible. I got out my binoculars and was able to get a bearing to the harbor and put a nice black dot down on the chart where we were. We made it in fine.

We had contemplated some night cruising to make our daily mileage more like 50 miles on this trip.
That experience convinced us that night sailing in a new boat in unknown waters in any kind of weather was a bad idea....