standard horizon cpf300i

[mercedes]

Has anyone had any experience with the Standard Horizon cpf 300i chartplotter/fishfinder? Ease of use, is the fishfinder effective, how is it to vew in bright sunlight, does it have any internal coastline charts, and how reliable is it? Any info would be helpful. Thanks, Mercedes

[KeyPineSavage]

btt

[mercedes]

Key Pine Savage- Your comment did not come through. Pls Repeat. Thanks, Mercedes

[tonyrr]

Mercedes, I bought one of these units over the weekend at my local boat show (only a five hour drive!).

I have it fired up in the house (without the transducer, of course, so I can't say anything about the fishfinder) and have played for an hour or so. It seems easy to use, with pretty intuitive controls. The C-MAP Wide Max card has all the details I could expect of my local coastline, with nifty photos of selected harbours etc. I have yet to try the tide calculation feature, which matters round here with massive Fundy tides, and tidal variation too. Screen definition is very good.

Edited post (two days later).

When I originally posted this, I thought that I had had a problem with a missing lug on the main power/acc1 socket on the unit. Prodded (very politely!) by Jason Kennedy of Standard Horizon, I had another and more careful look and FOUND THE "MISSING" LUG! Sincere and humble apologies to SH. It was all me, and not them at all.

Feeling slightly foolish, and with kudos to SH for a quick follow up to a customer with a problem.

Regards, Tony.

[Smink]

I just sold a boat with the 5" black & grey version that was six seasons old. Other than the "long time to lock on stations" problem the older units had it was very user friendly.... never any moisture issues either. These new units come with a three year warranty and a fixed repair price there after! Simple to use.

[surfcaster51]

For detailed maps your going to have to get a C-Map for your area.
On A scale of 1-10 direct sunlight viewing is an 8. Not the brightest plotter made but more then adequate.
Reliability is excellent as is Customer service and warranty

Overall a great little plotter for the money.

The Black box FF525 fishfinder also works great at marking fish and is an excellent value

[KeyPineSavage]

Originally Posted by tonyrr

My main problem was in getting the power cord connected. The socket on the unit has 8 pins, and the cord has 8 receptacles. The challenge is to mate them correctly, when there are about 6 ways to do this,and only one is right. My dealer was no help, but I struck lucky and it took only two tries.

The cord has a slot which is I suppose is meant to mate with a projection in the unit`s socket to ensure that the connection can only be made in one position, but the factory installed a completely plain socket for reasons known only to themselves. Most annoying and worrying.

Tony

I think S-H would like to know about this, as it's a pretty serious screwup. They read here quite a bit, but if they don't chime in, I might give customer service a phone call.

[tonyrr]

Keypine, good thoughts. I would have called customer service, but neither the SH website nor the CPF 300i manual appear to have their telephone number or their e-mail address for end users. And it was the weekend, so probably no point anyway!

Regards, Tony.

[Standard Horizon]

Tonyrr,

Thank you for your recent purchase of the Standard Horizon GPS Chart Plotter. The GPS chart plotter’s 8-pin power cord should have a notch in the connector that should marry up with a bar on the power receptacle on the rear of the chart plotter allowing the 8 pin power cord to only be installed one way. Please send me an image of the “completely plain socket” so I can forward to engineering. I have checked our inventory and the power cord and receptacle are correct.

Thank you for brining this to our attention and look forward to resolving immediately.

Please note that our contact information is available on our website and in our manuals.

Website
Please click on the “contact us” tab on the Home Page or visit http://www.standardhorizon.com/?cmd=ContactUs&DivisionID=3.

Owner’s Manual, Page 13
Introduction
“Congratulations on your purchase of the Standard Horizon GPS Chart Plotter. Whether this
is your first GPS Chart Plotter/Fish Finder, or if you have other STANDARD HORIZON
equipment, the STANDARD HORIZON organization is committed to ensuring your enjoyment
of this GPS Chart Plotter/Fish Finder. STANDARD HORIZON technical support
personnel stand behind every product we sell, and our Product Support team invites you
to contact us should you require technical advice or assistance, at 800/767-2450, or
marinetech@vxstdusa.com.”

Best regards,

[tonyrr]

Jason Kennedy, at SH.

You were quite right - the "missing" lug is indeed present, just lurking in a position at 2 o'clock under the rim of the socket so that I managed not to see it. I have edited my original post so that my comments are no longer visible, and would like to apologise for being a bit stupid. As a suggestion, perhaps the factory could be asked to install the sockets with the lug at 6 o'clock, so that id**ts like me could see them easily.

My only remaining concern is that the manual (page 14) says that the supplied cables should be item T9101553, and they are actually labeled CBC0FS0805.

Are these cables identical, especially the remaining six coloured wires i.e. other than the two power + and - wires already connected?

Regards, Tony.

[Standard Horizon]

Tonyrr,

Sorry for the confusion with the part number labeled on the supplied power cable. T9101553 is the Standard Horizon part number for the cable, CBC0FS0805 is the part number that is labeled on the cable from our supplier. The cable that you received with your chart plotter is correct.