Jack Erbes wrote:


(1) Are those white with a magenta upper half? If so that is the symbol
used for marking tide stations in the newer NOAA S-57 ENC charts. It
looks like maybe Garmin is updating some of the symbols on their charting.


(2) The Garmin/Garmin mode, as opposed to NMEA/NMEA mode, means that it
will
send the Garmin proprietary NMEA sentences instead of standard NMEA
sentences.

It would be interesting to see if MapSource or another GPS utility will
see and be able to upload and download to that.

When we looked at the manual on that it said that the SD card could be
used to transfer your data but did not go info any detail about the
formats of the files or anything else.

If you back up your data to a SD card and then look at the card on a PC,
you should be able to see the data file(s). If the data is in a *.gpx
file then you should be able to use MapSource of any of a number of
other softwares to read the data.
Jack,
(1) The tide (Height) "diamonds" are black with a white fill on which is
a black 'T', the current diamonds are magenta with a pinkish fill and a
magenta 'C'. Hovering the cursor over the 'T' displays a larger
rectangle with the present height in ft and a vertical bar graph showing
the possible tidal range. Hovering the cursor over the 'C' displays a
broad current direction arrow with the present current written on it's
stem and additionally a long label which extends beyond the display both
ways, above it with for example "2.25 miles SE of San Francisco".

(2) I have a fairly complete set of .bsb chart files of the PNW from
"Captain", both Canadian metric and NOAA English measure. I use these
with the old 16 bit NavMaster III program and can upload the routes and
way-points to the 45xl using Garmin/Garmin interface mode. I hoped to do
the same with the 540s. I use nmea/nmea mode only to send the 1 sec
position samples to the laptop.

On another topic, my boat Swoose is a Nonsuch 26c with 3/4" solid f/g
ahead of the keel, I wonder if "thru the hull" will work or must I
install another thru-hull transducer ($129 plastic, $299 bronze?
Regards, Dick