Hey Guys and Gals,
I've owned a Lowrance 2000c now for about a year and recently picked up their latest SD card with Terrain Awareness for North America. To change the SD card takes a couple of minutes, just like switching the card in a camera.
First of all, my background in GPS, is with Garmin, and I own and use two Garmin receivers today. I have also operated the B767-300 and B747-400 which were equipped with IRS units backed up with dual GPS and dual VOR/DME backup. That said, I do like the Lowrance which we bought for the RV-8. Because we live and operate aircraft mostly in Canada, we purchased the Lowrance, "Map Create 6 Topographical" set of CDRoms for Canada and the U.S. Non-Topo set for South of "49".
I then bought a 1 Gig SD card and downloaded the topo mapping data for the entire province of British Columbia, the Yukon and all the way up to the Arctic Ocean, and an East/West corridor comprising Southern Alberta, all the way to Winnipeg Manitoba. This data, combined with the online download of the Jeppesen Data (renewable with subscription) pretty much filled the SD Card. I purchased another 512MB SDCard for the Pacific NortWest and Eastward to the Great Lakes area.
The mapping info is incredible however. I can zoom in on any city in the Topo area above and place the cursor on any street and get the address! Not too useful for flying, but what about the Topo features shown? Contour lines labelled with elevation are available everywhere when zoomed in. Ditches and small duckponds are shown and almost all creeks are named. Lakeshores are accurate and curved correctly. Rivers with islands and roads are dispalyed accurately also. Yes, the water is blue! Gotta like that color.
Curiously, the "Map Create 6" Topo data for the runways is more accurate than the Jeppesen data overlay. Landing at a remote Chilcotin airstrip last year, the display showed two runways for Anahim Lake. As I landed on one of the runways, I looked over to where the other runway was depicted on the display. Just a bunch of scrub trees?? I went into the menu and turned "OFF" the Jeppesen data. Problem solved, the second runway disappeared off the screen. BTW, as I tracked up runway centerline, the TOPO display zoomed in showed the aircraft right on centerline too.
Impressive as all this topo data is, when the Terrain Awareness SD card recently became available for the 2000c, I ordered it. When I first installed the card and fired up the GPS, it seemed that some updating was occuring. I was initially a bit disappointed though, to find that the terrain was presented in relief instead of contours, and the plan view did not show the terrain higher than our house in red as per the advertising pictures on the internet. The profile view however, did show the adjacent control zone in yellow and the higher terrain in red. The terrain awareness screen is a separate page which is split in two horizontally with the profile view on the bottom and the plan view at the top. The lower flight profile screen can be sized to your preference.
Just for kicks, I loaded the Lowrance into my truck and left on a short trip through the mountains. I was surprised then, to find that the plan view (God's eye view) suddenly showed all the higher terrain in red as soon as the ground speed hit 20 knots! When I slowed below 20 knots, the red (higher)terrain reverted to standard coloration. OK, I guess they figure if you hit the ground at 20 knots or less you won't hurt yourself?!?! I dunno?
The profile view was pretty cool as it showed my projected flight path angle while I climbed hills in the truck with a projection out to 15nm and time projection labels (at present groundspeed) on the flight path marker line also. I could see that I would be boring through the mountain ahead in about 5 minutes. All in all, I was quite impressed with the 100 dollar investment for the TerrainAwareness SDcard. As I wound my way through the mountains at ground level, (that darn F-350 just won't fly) I could see the valleys beside the road open up with different colors as the ground dropped away from the road that would show safe passage for flight through cloud. This could be quite usefull for an engine failure above the clouds in my mind. The rivers and lakes still showed up as blue while below the GPS level.
We plan on installing the Lowrance in our RV-8 panel as the primary Nav instrument. It will be ported to the Trio Avionics EZ Pilot for roll control and to the EFIS for groundspeed/wind info. The one thing about the Lowrance is that it takes a fair amount of power. The four AA size batteries are toast after about one hour. Basically, it must be plugged into the ships power supply. The AA batteries could be used for standby power but it is hard to know how much charge remains in a drycell. The GPS is WAAS capable and gets pretty good WAAS coverage in B.C. even while on the ground in a vehicle.
There are quite few display screens on the 2000c and some of them are very EFIS like in their presentation. I will try to stick a screen shot in here of when I was flying an RV-4 from Kamloops out to Wisconsin last July. After the first 200 miles, I stopped looking at the charts even though I had bought new ones for the trip. The Lowrance did it all, including keeping me clear of TRA's MA's and the control zones in the Milwaukee area. I particularly liked the nearest airport feature as I stretched the RV's fuel for the last leg, Bismark ND to Racine WI. Although I squeaked into Racine with legal reserves, the comfort of all those little airports sprinkled around the Milwaukee area was heightened with the nearest airport feature on the Lowrance, especially since I could check for fuel at each airport on the GPS.
All in all, for the dollar, the 2000c is a good value. I would have to tick the box,"Would Buy Again" YES.
Cheers, Pete
I've owned a Lowrance 2000c now for about a year and recently picked up their latest SD card with Terrain Awareness for North America. To change the SD card takes a couple of minutes, just like switching the card in a camera.
First of all, my background in GPS, is with Garmin, and I own and use two Garmin receivers today. I have also operated the B767-300 and B747-400 which were equipped with IRS units backed up with dual GPS and dual VOR/DME backup. That said, I do like the Lowrance which we bought for the RV-8. Because we live and operate aircraft mostly in Canada, we purchased the Lowrance, "Map Create 6 Topographical" set of CDRoms for Canada and the U.S. Non-Topo set for South of "49".
I then bought a 1 Gig SD card and downloaded the topo mapping data for the entire province of British Columbia, the Yukon and all the way up to the Arctic Ocean, and an East/West corridor comprising Southern Alberta, all the way to Winnipeg Manitoba. This data, combined with the online download of the Jeppesen Data (renewable with subscription) pretty much filled the SD Card. I purchased another 512MB SDCard for the Pacific NortWest and Eastward to the Great Lakes area.
The mapping info is incredible however. I can zoom in on any city in the Topo area above and place the cursor on any street and get the address! Not too useful for flying, but what about the Topo features shown? Contour lines labelled with elevation are available everywhere when zoomed in. Ditches and small duckponds are shown and almost all creeks are named. Lakeshores are accurate and curved correctly. Rivers with islands and roads are dispalyed accurately also. Yes, the water is blue! Gotta like that color.
Curiously, the "Map Create 6" Topo data for the runways is more accurate than the Jeppesen data overlay. Landing at a remote Chilcotin airstrip last year, the display showed two runways for Anahim Lake. As I landed on one of the runways, I looked over to where the other runway was depicted on the display. Just a bunch of scrub trees?? I went into the menu and turned "OFF" the Jeppesen data. Problem solved, the second runway disappeared off the screen. BTW, as I tracked up runway centerline, the TOPO display zoomed in showed the aircraft right on centerline too.
Impressive as all this topo data is, when the Terrain Awareness SD card recently became available for the 2000c, I ordered it. When I first installed the card and fired up the GPS, it seemed that some updating was occuring. I was initially a bit disappointed though, to find that the terrain was presented in relief instead of contours, and the plan view did not show the terrain higher than our house in red as per the advertising pictures on the internet. The profile view however, did show the adjacent control zone in yellow and the higher terrain in red. The terrain awareness screen is a separate page which is split in two horizontally with the profile view on the bottom and the plan view at the top. The lower flight profile screen can be sized to your preference.
Just for kicks, I loaded the Lowrance into my truck and left on a short trip through the mountains. I was surprised then, to find that the plan view (God's eye view) suddenly showed all the higher terrain in red as soon as the ground speed hit 20 knots! When I slowed below 20 knots, the red (higher)terrain reverted to standard coloration. OK, I guess they figure if you hit the ground at 20 knots or less you won't hurt yourself?!?! I dunno?
The profile view was pretty cool as it showed my projected flight path angle while I climbed hills in the truck with a projection out to 15nm and time projection labels (at present groundspeed) on the flight path marker line also. I could see that I would be boring through the mountain ahead in about 5 minutes. All in all, I was quite impressed with the 100 dollar investment for the TerrainAwareness SDcard. As I wound my way through the mountains at ground level, (that darn F-350 just won't fly) I could see the valleys beside the road open up with different colors as the ground dropped away from the road that would show safe passage for flight through cloud. This could be quite usefull for an engine failure above the clouds in my mind. The rivers and lakes still showed up as blue while below the GPS level.
We plan on installing the Lowrance in our RV-8 panel as the primary Nav instrument. It will be ported to the Trio Avionics EZ Pilot for roll control and to the EFIS for groundspeed/wind info. The one thing about the Lowrance is that it takes a fair amount of power. The four AA size batteries are toast after about one hour. Basically, it must be plugged into the ships power supply. The AA batteries could be used for standby power but it is hard to know how much charge remains in a drycell. The GPS is WAAS capable and gets pretty good WAAS coverage in B.C. even while on the ground in a vehicle.
There are quite few display screens on the 2000c and some of them are very EFIS like in their presentation. I will try to stick a screen shot in here of when I was flying an RV-4 from Kamloops out to Wisconsin last July. After the first 200 miles, I stopped looking at the charts even though I had bought new ones for the trip. The Lowrance did it all, including keeping me clear of TRA's MA's and the control zones in the Milwaukee area. I particularly liked the nearest airport feature as I stretched the RV's fuel for the last leg, Bismark ND to Racine WI. Although I squeaked into Racine with legal reserves, the comfort of all those little airports sprinkled around the Milwaukee area was heightened with the nearest airport feature on the Lowrance, especially since I could check for fuel at each airport on the GPS.
All in all, for the dollar, the 2000c is a good value. I would have to tick the box,"Would Buy Again" YES.
Cheers, Pete
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