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Flyer68

Well Known Member
Has anyone ever had any good luck w/a Lowrance 2000C? There are five of them we know of here in the airpark, and every one of them has been sent in for repair or replacement. Mine is not quite 2 years old, and since it's never been installed in an airplane, it only had about 3 hrs of use. It blew up while I was trying to learn how to use it the other day. (gray screen w/lines, very faint logon screen, then a buzz and it went blank.) The support guy at Lowrance said send it in W/$212 and we'll send you a new one! Exact same thing happened to my next door neighbor! What's the story w/Lowrance?

Flyer68
 
2000C

I have one of the first ones built and no trouble for almost 3 years now. I love it....
 
Mine has three years of problem-free flying. Another local pilot/owner purchased a 2000c and had nothing but trouble - went through three or four warranty replacements before he got one that worked, and it's been bullet proof. By the same token, his buddy who purchased his 2000c at exactly the same time (sequential transactions at Oshkosh vendor booth) and has never had a moment's trouble.

By the way, my brother went through four Garmin 296's before getting one that would work. Similarly, he's had a few EKP-IV's that didn't work. It's a crapshoot. If you've got a GPS that works, hang onto it! If you're buying a new GPS, hang onto your old one until the new one is proven to work in the same environment!
 
2000C

I bought 2000C when they first came out and update with a new terrain card at Osh about a year later. Have had to reset with the hard start once but has been doing great for about 3 years. A friend bought one at the same time for his Warrior and has no problems. Has no terrain but we did update the software. You might try to reboot the unit with a hard start it shows you how in the manual. Worked for me when it would not pick up satellites very quick.

RV7A
Squeak
Southern Indiana
 
2000C

Got mine when they first came out, installed the Terrain update, have it linked to my TruTrak ADI for heading indication and it's been 100% trouble free in over 800 hours of flying. If it had XM Weather it would be perfect, guess I'll have to use my IPhone and Foreflight software App for weather now.
 
Canadian_JOY said:
By the way, my brother went through four Garmin 296's before getting one that would work. Similarly, he's had a few EKP-IV's that didn't work. It's a crapshoot. If you've got a GPS that works, hang onto it! If you're buying a new GPS, hang onto your old one until the new one is proven to work in the same environment!
Click to expand...

:D

What's your brother doing wrong? :)

I've had a Garmin 296, 496, 696, and Lowrance 600c; besides two black & white Garmins before those. All have worked, and none ever sent in for repair.

BTW, I know of another Lowrance 2000 that's been working for about 1 1/2 years now.

L.Adamson -- RV6A (flying)
 
These responses are kind of what I had hoped for. There is reason to "HOPE" that the next one will be a keeper. It is only a back up, but I would hate to be in the mountains in the dark and depending on the terrain feature, when it blew up.
Thanks a bunch guys for your responses. So far, I don't feel too fuzzy about Lowrance.

flyer68
 
I've been using mine for almost 3 years.
It also drives my EZ-Pilot. No problems. I like the ease of use with the menu system & button interface.

My only complaint is that it does not include private airports.
 
L.Adamson said:
:D

What's your brother doing wrong? :)

L.Adamson -- RV6A (flying)
Click to expand...


Well, as it turns out, my brother wasn't doing anything wrong. Garmin had a quality problem. The entire box of 296's which were shipped to the retailer were ALL bad. The retailer kept shipping replacements to my brother, but they all came from the same initial shipment from Garmin (or a distributor of some sort). Finally after the 3rd one my brother had enough and told them they'd better call Garmin and get the 3 failed ones analyzed and send him a known-good unit from the factory. The factory was contacted and admitted they knew they had shipped bad product but hadn't sufficient record keeping to know what went where. As a result they were reticent to alert anybody to the quality problem for fear of taking a huge black eye. The last unit has been just fine.

As mentioned before, ALL manufacturers have problems. There's NO GPS on the market that's immune to this and we've now got evidence to show that all the most popular aviation handheld GPS units have had problems at one time or another. While I'm a fan of the Lowrance units based on feature/function/value, I'd be mad as a hatter if mine quit working. My flight instructor is mad cuz the buttons on his Garmin have quit working. Any time we spend that much cash on a little electronic whiz box we expect it to work, period. And to that end we should hold the manufacturers accountable and demand both high quality and excellent customer service for that odd time when quality slips.
 
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