Garmin 18HD odd experience

[2ntow]

I have a Garmin 18HD attached to my 3210. While fishing the other day, had the radar on. After about an hour, the display beeps and says it has lost the radar signal and radar display was black. All other displays (gps map, menus, pages) displayed correctly. Checked the connections and they seemed fine. Shut down and restarted 3210 a couple times, with no luck....still no radar.

Got around to troubleshooting it today. Turned on 3210 and first thing that shows on the menu is gps is found and so is the radar...in standby mode. First time I have seen it show up on the status page like that. Anyway, go to the radar display page, hit the function button, get the message that it is warming up (this is normal), and select YES. Everything powers up just fine. Ok...this has me a little confused as to why it is working now. Now, this is the other thing that I noticed for the first time today, I could hear the motor turning the array inside the dome. Never heard it before. This has me wondering if something may be out of alignment and over time binds up enough to cause an error. Is that possible??? Oh, of course, this unit is 18 months old, so it is out of warranty (just my luck if repair is necessary).

Anybody else experience anything like this? I plan on contacting Garmin support on Monday to see what they think is happening.

[kapoc]

I'm guessing when you were troubleshooting the boat was off. The motor noise will usally be masked by people,engine,and wave noise not really anything to worry about unless you hear a screeching or somthing. As far as losing the signal you can look in the dome where the connections are into the motherboard to ensure it hasn't wiggled loose a bit and check the back of your machine for tightness of connections, no hard bends in the wire that could cause a break in the cable etc other than that you should be fine.

[craigwhite]

If you were using the radar at anchor without the engine running, the radar may have shut down due to dropping voltage. Generally, a radar will consume alot of power. Leaving it on while at anchor will lead to the battery being drained faster than normal. After starting the motor and recharging the battery, the unit would likely perform correctly. I'd check and see if there is a low voltage sensor within the radome. It is likely why your unit worked fine when you tried to troubleshoot it later on (the batteries had been charged fully).

Could also be a bad crimp on the power lead, or bad cat5 connection to the data cable. This would not be my first assumption as you have been using this machine for 18 months without problem. Your call to Garmin will likely answer your questions. Let us know how it turns out.