Hi there!

Has anyone experienced a problem that HDS Gen2 Touch records files with wrong time tag? It hasn't always been like that with mine but since couple of months I have noticed my files recording time is shifted 2 hours earlier. On HDS the time is set right. When I record a waypoint, it has the right time. However, when I record a sonar log and transfer it to my computer, the time of creation is 2 hours earlier?

Sounds like it could be a timezone issue?

You are right Matt! I checked it out and it seems that my tracks are recorded with UTC time while my HDS shows local time (which is 2 hours later) and uses local time for waypoints. I have tried to find where I can set my HDS gen2 Touch not to use UTC but local time for recording tracks but I cannot find it :(
Does anyone know where this is set?

From a crowd sourcing perspective, it makes sense to store logs with a UTC time.

Local time is meaningless without knowing the offset and since local time is manually set, it can't be trusted to be calculated from time zone and DST maps.

Logs should also be cross referenced against lake level or tide and current records before integrating into a community layer which requires time to be from a known baseline.

OK. I checked it a bit more. This is how it works (doesn't work) in my case.
My HDS obviously records tracks with UTC. Let's say it's OK and that I don't change that. What should I do then?
When I import the tracks in RM and my import/export time zone is set on my local time then I get the time of tracks according to UTC time (two hours earlier than local time in summer). If I set the import/export time zone in RM to UTC, I get the time of tracks 4 hours earlier than local time in summer?
It is important for me so I can compare the times of my waypoints and tracks and later when I analyse tracks to know what exact time something happened and, of course, that I can apply the correct local tide adjustment!
Matt?
Somehow it still seems to me that I should be able to set my HDS to record tracks according to my local time somewhere...

I'll have to take a look at this to try and understand what is going on. Internally, RM stores all times as UTC - local time is displayed by using the timezone specified for the track, if the user selectes the "local times" option. We take the last write time from the sonar log file using a method that asks for the time in UTC, so it is hard to reconcile that with what you are seeing - especially the behaviour you get when viewing times in UTC. It sounds a little like the HDS is "declaring" these times to be UTC, when in fact they are local.

Thanks Matt! Any help is appreciated very much!

I was using RM all this time and I just realized this. Probably during winter months the difference was just one hour (winter time) and I went on the sea just couple of times. However, I don't think I had this problem with my old HDS 7 Gen1...

OK, now the hours have changed because we have switched to winter time again. Now I have a situation like this.
I recorded a track at 8:00 local time on my HDS which has the time set correctly to local. On my computer it says that the track was saved at 7:00 and so says RM too. Time zone in RM is set to UTC+1 which coresponds to where I am. This would mean that my track is saved with UTC time? And if that is so why RM isn't calculating my local time correctly?
The other case is with my waypoints. I recorded a waypoint at 8:00. On my computer, the usr file says 7:00? In RM it says 9:00?
Does anyone know what is going on here?
I have called my local Lowrance representative but it seems that they haven't encountered such problem yet... probably because most of the people aren't dealing with tracks and waypoints anyway...
Help!!!!

I dont know if this is any help but I tag a waypoint at the start of each sonar log that I record so that I have the correct start time. ( I need this as I deal with changing tides)

I then import the sl2 logs into reefmaster, and change the first track point to the time of the recorded waypoint, all the other times are then automatically changed according to the first time. My tide station "WXTIDES" then applies the correct tidal offsets and all is good.

I'm running into this problem too however my timezone is UTC+10:00 so it's really noticeable.
Next time I head out I'll record one or 2 sl2 files that I can email across if you like.