Topic: maps

[elkaddict]

As I live here in canada we have a very limited amounts of maps available for out lakes.
Is there a genaric map comparible to a land base system like garmin topo canada just to give you a refence point of where you are on a lake so I dont need to bring my hand held unit.

[BillM]

It sucks, but this is why I bring my handheld Garmin loaded with topo maps for lakes that don't have coverage on my Navionics..  Would be killer if you could make your own topo's for the HB's so at least you'd have a birds eye view of the lake you're on.

I'd be very surprised if in the not so distance future that you've be able overlay Google maps onto the HB (Or perhaps this is just me dreaming)

[Bob B]

Navionics  new web based software that will allow you to scan yourself and they will process the data and send it back to you.
I can't give you all the details......it is only available for certain chips.....go to their web page and you should be able to read up on it.

There are other 3rd party software programs that will allow you to make your own maps.  Maybe they will chime in here.

[Jdeee]

I spoke to a Navionics Rep and they said that Canada will not be part of there upload program

Reefmaster is an excellent program to make maps. Ask the owner Matt for a trial and give it a try, it's much better than any map you can buy for Canadian waters from any company.

[matt@reefmaster]

Thanks for the plug Jdee!

The other thing you can do, if you are just looking for a lake outline (and it sounds like you are, in the OP), is to trace your lake outline in Google Earth. You can then save this polygon/polyline as a KML file, and convert it to a GPX file in something like GPSBabel. Then run it through HBPC to create a track, load it into your unit and set the track style to something solid. You'll then see your lake outline.

matt