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.