Software for Garmin 162

[Hamburg Ken]

I just purchased my garmin162 and was wondering which software i should purchase for detailed lake maps.
Should I purchase
1. garmin Recreational lakes and hotmaps
or
2. garmin blue chart cd roms

Thanks

Ken

[Gilligan]

Depends where you fish. If you are on the Great Lakes the bluecharts are great.

[Fitz1131]

I have a 162 that came with the Hotspots maps and the Lights and Waterways maps. The problem I had with using the Hotspots maps was that, if you load a specific map, all the other details for the area go back to the basic map. For example, I load in Lake Geneva Hotspots map. All the rest of the lakes in the area are limited to the basic map.

I load in the lights and waterways maps. These maps are much more accurate than the basic map set. This may sound confusing but once you pick the detail map set, it should make sense. I fish around Wisconsin, Detroit river, Western Basin of Erie and all over Lake Michigan. I just load in the appropriate set.

[jake]

i have both the blue charts and the recreational lakes/hotspots. like fitz. i just load up whatever i need for where i'm going. a tech at garmin said that you can load maps from both databases at the same time. i've never done it but i think he's right. all the maps are available via a drop down menu when you start mapsource. it seems that you can toggle back and forth between maps while using the selection tool to pick the ones you want. if you have a big enough chip you could load most, if not all the spots you need at one time. once you have it all selected you can save it as a named map set.


when we lose the 2nd. amendment the others will be history too!

[REW]

Ken,
With a Garmin 162, you can load maps from several different sources - up to the total storage capacity of the 162.

Go to map create, and create the map that you want from what software you are using, then (WITHOUT DOING A SAVE) go to the next software and create the map you want -- continue adding maps - to the maximum storage of the Garmin 162.

Now, do the "file - SAVE".
The file save, will compile all of the different maps from the various software into a single loadable file.

Go to your uplink button, select the file you just saved.
If the map will fit, it will load all of your maps from the single file.

If you find that you have used to much memory, you will need to go back and either delete one or more of the maps or make one or more of the maps smaller to fit into the memory. When editing is complete - do another file save and try again.

The 4 meg of memory in the 162 is fairly restrictive, so if you put in a very detailed lake bottom map, it can easily eat up much of the availalble memory.

Take care
REW