Time not displaying on HDS Gen 2 units?
I’ve been seeing several reports that HDS Gen 2 units have stopped displaying the time this week.
Lowrance keeps telling people the Air Force is doing maintenance or there is interference, but this is 100% BS.
What I believe is going on is there is a coding mistake in the firmware.
The time string decoded from GPS includes “GPS Week” which is a number that indicates how many weeks it’s been since the week of 29 August 1999. This number goes up every week until it reaches 1024 on 31 March next year, then it starts over at 0 on 7 April.
The reason this problem just showed up is that ever since these units were in R&D or in service, the GPS week has been 3 digits long. This past Sunday morning, the GPS week rolled over to 1000 which is the first time this code has ever seen a 4 digit week.
The bad news is Lowrance probably won’t fix it on these older units. The good news is the problem MIGHT go away on 7 April 2019.
If you are having this problem, contact Lowrance. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. If they try to BS you with the maintenance story, call them out on their BS.