Errors in Lowrance / Navionics Tidal Predictions

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Sinbad2222

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I have just bought a new Lowrance iFinderH20c GPS/Chartplotter and a new 28G Navionics Gold XL3 Chart.
The tidal predictions for Portsmouth, both times and heights, are totally wrong.
Doing a Google search I found a lot of forum postings last June in which people far more expert than I, pointed the finger at Lowrance for these errors. The problems occurred in all Lowrance plotters. Lowrance(USA) were said to have very uncooperative attitude when the facts were put to them.
Can anyone update me on the situation? Should I reject the plotter and/or the chart?
With my chart, delivered this morning, came the offer of a free upgrade to a new "XL9" chart due out "sometime in April" which apparently will supercede the XL3 charts. I wonder if this new range of charts will solve the Lowrance problem.
If I reject the Lowrance plotter I am stuck with a Navionics SD card with limited applicability. I know now I should have bought Garmin!
Any advice from forum experts would be much appreciated.
 
For my 3600i - I saw there was a firmware upgrade at xmas - including:

Enhanced support for LGC-2000 GPS modules
Added support for LGC-3000 GPS modules
Many minor enhancements to the NMEA 2000 features
Improved Tides and Currents to compensate properly for Daylight savings time
Improved waypoint sharing
Includes all features from previous updates, including:
Added "Choose Viewable Pages" window
Added the ability to share waypoints and synchronize backlighting over the NMEA 2000 buss
Added many enhancements to the overlay data
Enhanced MMC memory card support
Added Gauges as an overlay option
Modified the "Transfer My Data" feature
Modified the popup information

I've not yet tested this - but hope it may partially address some of the tide issues.

Actually if you worked in feet and ignored daylight saving they were almost OK most of the time
 
Can you be more specific on the days involved, and the magnitude of the errors? The data becomes corrupted on certain days, but otherwise as stated the Navionics figures have been generally OK with DST turned off. I wonder therefore if this is a new problem?

By the way, the software update in Dec. did nothing to fix the old issues on my 3500C. I'm very dismayed by Lowrance's attitude to all this. They've been aware of the problems for 18 months and have given them no priority it seems. Two reasons I suspect a) the metre/fathom issue does not affect their USA customers b) they have no interest in solving the Navionics problem as they have their own competing charting system!
 
I have not done a detailed analysis of the errors.
I tried a few different standard ports at a few different dates and the errors seemed very large and random.
I think I have, in fact, solved the problem. As long as I set the tides to be in feet then the times and heights seem correct and that is with DST on. Looks as though Lowrance have gone some way in addressing the problem but it doesn't say much for their product. Also the alarm beeps are very faint even with the volume turned fully up and the covers over the 12V input and external aerial are loose and cannot be waterproof.
Needless to say the unit is being returned for a refund - I shall not be buying any Lowrance products again!
 
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