[TG] [TG11] Axiom Pro 9 Livemapping Issues

[randy@onlinecruisingguide.com]

Hi Tom-
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, and confirming my suspicions on this feature. I guess my issues with this situation boil down to this: We have a great feature that turns out to be too taxing on the computing resources of the device, but VERY FEW options for controlling it.

There are numerous things pushing piles of additional data onto our A65

1) The default setting for SonarChart enabled MFDs, as I understand it is "on," so all devices are logging sonar data and storing it. There are numerous posts from people who are surprised to find weird pink and red lines following their tracks ;-)

2) There is no setting on the MFD to restrict the collection of this data, without shutting it off altogether. A setting that would limit sonar logging to depths less than 150 or 100 or 50 feet would be spectacular. Of course, if this feature were developed, it would probably only be available in LH3, so it wouldn't even help us. Grrrrrrr.

3) In our networking setup, the A65 is at the helm, where it's imperative to have the sonar log data viewable. For some reason this data can only be seen on the MFD with the card installed. If we could have the card installed in the ES98 at the nav station, and share that data through the network, my guess is that the greater processing capability of the ES98 would help a lot to make the whole system more usable, no? Why can't it work this way? As it is now, it seems we're asking the most of the unit with the least capability.

4) It has been suggested before to "turn off sonar logging when it's not necessary." For full time cruisers out in areas where existing charting is minimal, it's hard to define an area where this data isn't helpful, if not absolutely necessary. Even if we could, remembering to turn it off, and then back on again is unlikely in real world conditions.

Regarding your suggestion of uploading sonar logs regularly and relying more heavily on SonarChart view from Navionics, on the surface this seems like a good option, but our experience so far is that quite often we see no difference in the downloads from Navionics, even after months, or years, of uploading the same depth data for a given area. My suspicion is that our logs are often disqualified, because our depth data is tide corrected, and the tide data on file with Navionics we have found is often inaccurate, which in their QC would make our depth data seem inaccurate.

Having said that, we are indeed using SonarChart more now, especially as we can no longer rely on our MFD to display any sonar data when we really need it. So frustrating.

Can you provide specific instructions for safely removing sonar log files from the chart card? I'd like to start there, I guess (which kills me), and try to move forward with a clean slate and better data management. But in my opinion, Raymarine is NOT doing their part to help with this data management issue.