Humminbird Contour XD...

Sucks. I fire up my new $1700 plus 998 yesterday, go to the nav screen and scroll down to Old Hickory, my usual lake and what do I find? A big white blob with absolutely zero contour or even nav information. Guess I'll be navigating by my hand held Garmin as usual until I can get a Navionics card. For the price paid every sizable lake in the country should have at least navigational info. Even KY Lake has nothing that I could tell. I'm a little disappointed to say the least. You can buy an automobile navigator with every road in the country on it for $150, so why can't a $1700 unit have at least channel and buoy info on it?

did you buy the NVB model or the regular i think nvb has the most maps preloaded

That's why it has slots for a card! You gotta pay if ya wanna play!

I didn't buy the Nav bundle. I knew the Navionics maps were much better than what would come with the standard package but assumed even the base XD maps would have basic information on them. I thought I did pay to play at least a little. Looks like I'll be buying the Navionics card now.

Don't get overly expectant of the navionics card. I was a bit dissapointed, it has contours, but I was expecting a little more detail with river and creek channels.

Which Navionics do you have? I'm looking at the 2010 premium. They say they have Old Hickory in high definition. In addition to topography do these maps have nav info as far as buoys, day beacons, etc.?

I have '09 premium. My lakes are supposedly HD. I do believe bouys and such are marked but can't say for sure as we don't have them on the lakes here. The maps in HD have 1' contours, which I don't really care about. I would like river and creek channels to be highlighted with a different color background. I have a friend with a lowrance that has the NVB preloaded, the river channel looks like a blue river running through the map.

Thanks for the info. The terrain here is pretty hilly/rolling. The impoundments can go from deep to shallow in the blink of an eye so it's always best to stay in the channels when travelling. I've seen guys in bass boats running 50-60 mph cut a point too close and end up with the lower unit up in the air. That's why I like the nav info when running the lake at night. Even though I know it well sometimes it's hard to know exactly where you are on a moonless night. Really wish we had Lakemaster maps for the Southeast, they look pretty sweet.

I was told by HB that Navionics gives them the info that they have only what they are given???????:eek: