Thread: i-pilot

Originally Posted by luvin.fishin

I dunno thar TJ. Het might even do tha baloney iffn ya don't want mayonnaise!! :D :D

yep...surely if you press the right button on that tv clicker, it'll just take you to wherever the fish are hidin' out...surely

Originally Posted by luvin.fishin

look at this link. both the terrova and pd-v2 are shown here. there is zero interference. same cables run inside the shaft when you buy a us-2 option. all you're doing is running them on the outside. shielded cable helps but if you run your cable on another troll motor it should work here. mine works fine and looks very good also.


http://www.crappie.com/crappie/fishi...ansducer+mount

I went to the other site and found very good information. Thanks for the help. I think I might be leaning more to the terrova now over the powerdrive with being able to do this with the transducer and also sounds like you can add the i-pilot much better too. Keeping the foot control operating when you install the i-pilot is another good feature.

Ok gents, here's my report on the i-Pilot. I installed mine last Wednesday and been working with it since. First, let me say I did not know that installing an i-Pilot on a PowerDriveV2 completely eliminates the foot pedal and thus your only TM control is through the remote. This gave me much doubt and reserve. Those that know how I fish know I do alot of hovering and the use of the momentary switch on the foot pedal got used often. Going totally wireless has taken some adjustment, but I found that if I just hooked the remote to my belt loop the adjustment from foot to hand for on/off and speed up/down was the easiest and I can still control direction by hand and fish with the other.

I also hoped upon hope that the spot lock would help with the hovering. It does not when you're fishing a very specific brushpile from a single side of your boat and targeting a specific spot on that brushpile. I look forward to using it in other ways like holding outside a shallow top and pitching or casting to it. I can tell you this, don't run up on a spot at over a mile per hour and hit the spot lock button. Of course you drift on past, reach the five foot limit quickly and then you had better hang on. I did this the first time and I thought I was on a bull in a rodeo. After it was all said and done the boat settled on the spot I had locked it to and we were facing the opposite direction. If you are going to use the spot lock feature, get to where you want to be and get the boat to a dead stop with the bow into the wind first, then spot lock it.

I did a little trolling Thursday and checked out all the autopilot, tracking and cruise control features. Sweet, just very very sweet is all I can say. I do love my crappie hovering but I just might have to find a way to troll more for other species. I had ultimate control of the boat in all aspects and didn't have to try very hard to do it. I am going to equate this to the lost art of correct spelling because of the spell check feature in word processing programs. Use the trolling features on the i-Pilot long enough and you will forget how to do all that stuff yourself manually. Effortless percision is how I would describe it.

Got another update on the i-Pilot. At first I didn't think the spot lock feature would help when hovering. I found a way.

In order to use my PowerDriveV2 when hovering, I made a bushing to wrap in the shaft to prevent it from locking into the motor base. This allowed me to control direction by hand freely. What I found is though it turns freely it's heavy enough that the motor base will still turn it.

So, I was sitting on a top with the boat at a dead stop and hit the spot lock. It did a pretty good job keeping me on the spot. With the bushing still on the shaft I was able to make immediate necessary adjustments then just hit the spot lock again. I still had to be the primary controller of the boat when hovering but the spot lock took the majority of those adjustments from me and made my job easier to stay on the spot.