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Connecting Garmin GPS to VHF

Former Member over 13 years ago

Hey all, I realize this is not the Cobra forum (I can't find one) so I thought this forum would be the next best place.

I have a Garmin chartplotter/GPS and I want to connect the NMEA1083 to my cobra VHF radio. All is good there, I know which color wires go to what, however, according to the cobra manual and the supplied "GPS interface cable" for the VHF radio - there is only a red and black wire for what appears to be only for receiving the GPS data to the radio. But not going back to the the GPS?

The garmin has wires for TX In and Out but the VHF only has TX In data wires.. why is that? Anyone know or has anyone ran into this "problem"?
I haven't connected everything up yet simply because it is bothering me that cobra's interface cable is only allowng me to connect GPS data to the radio and not both ways...a mistake on cobra's part or a common hook up?

thanks for listing and hopefully someone here has a work around :) Unless it's quite okay to not have the date going back to the garmin....

0 Former Member over 12 years ago

Connect Garmin GPSMAP 188C to Cobra MR55 EU DSC Radio

I had been searching for the answer to this question and then worked it out, so here it is:

Two wires from the Cobra DSC radio GPS port, one black, one red
Black goes to battery Negative
RED goes to NMEA OUT+

From the Garmin chartplotter (172c / 178c / 182c / 188c) power cable you will find a Green wire, this connects to the Red wire on the GPS port of the Cobra DSC MR55 radio, the Black wire from the Cobra GPS port connects to the battery negative along with the Black power cable.

At this point it still wont display the Lats and longs on the radio, so you have to press Menu twice on the GPS
go to "Comm" tab
select "Port 2" (as the green wire belongs to port 2)
Under "Serial data format"
change it to "NMEA In / NMEAOut"
Baud
"4800"
Now it works.
Hope this is of help to others.