Garmin 54cv install question

[iBoat Skipper Doug]

Just went through connecting a very similar model to the oringal poster, a Garmin 53CV, an identical unit with a different preloaded map system. Garmin 54 = costal. 53 = LakeVu inland lakes including the Great Lakes.

I connected my brand new Garmin 53CV to my brand new Garmin VHF110 via NMEA 0183 (connecting wires, not plugging into a NMEA 2000 network)

I experienhced multiple issues.

After I installed both the charplotter, VHF radio, VHF antenna, connected both to power, powered up both units which worked as expected, registered and received a FREE MMSI number via the United States Power Squadrons website, I figured cross connecting the GPS Chartploter and VHF would be simple for me. Boy, was I wrong.

1) Discovered the VHF110 wirring schemetic that is still on the Garmin website today is wrong. Their schematic shows 6 wires exiting the VHF110. Nope, there are 8 wires.

2) Discoverd the 53CV software is factory set to NMEA2000 with no mention of this in the manual. I had to change the internal software communication settings in the 53CV to “SLOW” as there is no NMEA0183 option. After wasting several hours, I found this setting, went for it, and it worked. I even called Garmin and asked them where in their documentation did it explain to do this. In brief, it doesn’t.

3) This one is minor, but I also had to change the software setting in the VHF110 from NMEA2000 to NMEA 0183. Although straight forward when compaired to finding and changing the GPS setting, this required setting change is not mentioned in their guideline for cross connecting these two units.

4) .... or should this be #1?

Why did I do all this? Why not just spend $50 more and buy the Garmin VHF115 with its built in GPS so I can skip all this bologna? Well, I wanted to receive DSC distress calls and have their location appear on my chartploter if they send location information, which according to an article I read at the US Power Squadrons website, less then 10% of DSC distress calls include GPS data because it was never set up.

Guess what? The Garmin 5x series of chartploters are send only. They can not receive this data via NMEA 0183 or NMEA 2000. Had I known this limitation, I would have went with the VHF115 with its built in GPS, and not bothered to cross connect the two units.

PS: I now have a flush mounted GPS, flush mounted VHF with MMSI number and my GPS location information appears on my VHF screen. However, I wasted several hours, several calls to Garmin, and experienced a bit of frustration.

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