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I seem to have a difficult time getting right over the top of the brushpiles with the Lowrnace HDS GPS. Usually i just get close and then find them with the fishfinder up front with the TM. Would I be better off with an external GPS, would this give me satisfactory results? Or would I be better of with another source for gps such as a Garmin unit? Any Advice?
the downscan should give you a great picture of the brush i dont think the gps will have anything to do with it, its the transducer,sonar and or structure scan. if your not picking it up then you have it angled incorrectly or its not working correctly i would say, ---------------but i am no expert. a call to lowrance maybe
Sorry I didnt explain the problem very well. The picture is great on the unit , but when the chart shows that I am sitting right ontop of a marked brush pile "waypoint" there is nothing showing on the structure scan. Usually i have to move around a 15-20 ft circle to find it. So to me it seems like the GPS is inaccurate.
Do you have the refresh rate set to time? Here are the instructions I copied from BBC.
Press menu twice, hylight chart then press enter, arrow down to "waypoints, routes, trails" and press enter. Use right arrow and hylight trails, then press menu, arrow down and hylight settings and press enter. In box called logging type change that to time. Then in box below that which says time period change it to 1 sec then exit back out.
I know what you are saying. I can use my little hand held Garmin e-trex and get right back to the spot. When I use my HD, I maneuver the boat to my waypoint then have to look around a bit to find the exact spot. The e-trex has a has a "go to" feature. It has an arrow in a dial that point to the waypoint and tells you the distance to the spot. I feel like I can get back to the exact spot with the e-trex.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tenntomm
On the Low, I feel like I can only get close. I'll try what justin61 says but I think I'm missing something and wish someone would explain how to be more accurate with the HDS
GPS. Maybe I need to zoom in on the spot even more then move to it. It would make the margin of error smaller. There has to be a better way.
zooming in may be the difference, do a test, and mark a waypoint zoomed all the way in, and mark another spot when zoomed out some, maybe 50 or 100' and see if that makes a difference. I use a garmin HH gps, and have waypoints/structure marked/saved, and if you miss the spot by just a little bit, the HH will not beep. I can see the structure on the FF but I may be off the "mark" a bit.
I've been considering the external antenna that has a refresh rate of 5 times a second. (I believe this is correct.) Tom will chime in and inform us all about it.
I do know what you mean though. If I mark a waypoint by scrolling the cursor to the center of a brush pile I like, It gets me close to it. But, I take into consideration that the internal GPS Antenna (My HDS-8 Head unit) is a good 3.5' away from my LSS-1 Transducer and about 3' away from my 2d Transducer.
When I mark a waypoint, it's marking the spot of my Head unit, not the spot my Downscan is showing.
With the external Antenna, I can mount that over the top of either transducer within inches of it. Not only would I have a faster refresh rate as to where I actually am, I would be marking the spot more directly. Also, when I am trying to zero in on a waypoint, I always have the GPS zoomed in as far as it will go. It will not show the waypoints if I'm aways from them, but I will follow the trail lines that are left in the memory until the waypoint shows.
If anyone knows where I can find a bargain on a new 4000 antenna, lemme know.
I had the same problem. It helps to have the HDS head unit close to the transducer., especially in shallow water. I installed the LCG4000 external antenna and now I have no problem finding stuff. However, I still trust my Garmin more. I really got the LCG4000 for slow trolling accuracy and direction below .5mph. LCG4000 makes a difference for me. I actually went out with billbob the other day without my Garmin. No problem, but I wasn't overrun with confidence without the Garmin either.
Also, best to zoom in max. At present, my HDS7 will only zoom in 50 feet, but I only have base maps on it. Not happy with this crap zoom restriction at all.
I zoom in and I have zero problems, when it says i am on brush, i am on brush, hd7 or hd8 try zooming in as far as it goes, I hope it works for you
Thanks JustinP61. My refresh settings were wrong, so know it is refreshing at 1/sec but it's still not accurate. Let me try to explain the test i conducted. After i changed the refresh settings i saved a waypoint exactly where the boat is setting in my carport. I then started a goto for that waypoint and left the trail turned on while zoomed all the way in to the 50ft scale. Initially it said i was within 10ft of the waypoint, over a period of approxiamtely 3 min, it ranged from as close as 3ft to as far as 45ft from the waypoint. The boat HAS NOT MOVED. I dont understand why it is this inaccurate, The gps fix is showing 3D the whole time.....not exactly sure what that means . I have also made sure the WAAS enabled is turned on. There is no possible way to stay on top of a brushtop if it is doing the same thing on the water, and from my past experiece I would say that it is. I conducted the same test in the same location with my 2000 model magellan handheld and it never got further than 3ft from the target. Somebody please help. BY the way mine is the HDS8.
You may be expecting too much! According to Garmin "Newer Garmin GPS receivers with WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) capability can improve accuracy to less than three meters on average" that is 10 feet and a lot depends on location and atmospheric conditions.
NO gps is going to give you "spot on" results. Only the military has access to something that accurate... they purposely dumb down civilian units to not read that accurately. As he said, 9-10 ft is really the best accuracy you can expect, under ideal conditions and reception.
You have to remember, the HDS units ARE the antenna. If you see something and mark it on your finder it marks the position of your finder when you saw the object. For example, you are trolling down the bank and see a brush pile and mark it on your bow unit. If you have a 20' boat and the transducer you were using was the LSS1 on the stern, then that is already 20' from the brush that you are going to be off. Under ideal circumstances with the 10' error, your best location is going to be up to 30' off, and thats on a good day. Using a handheld and holding it over the area is obviously going to deceive better results, but thats not the case. The HDS isnt any more inaccurate in my experience. You just have to pay attention to what your doing, and not mark your waypoint right on the brush pile.
What I have found is you need to mark your waypoint BEHIND where you saw it.... so for instance, dont put the cursor right on the pile, put it 20ft behind it the direction you came from. That would put it much closer to that acutal postion your unit was in when the brush passed under your boat. The left to right directions shouldn't be any different (for instance if your marking on side scan).. unless you were making a hard turn at the time.
Obviously the distance you put it from the object depends on the distance from the unit and the ducer. So if you mark it while idling at the wheel you may only put it back 10ft etc. Its still not perfect but it will definately get you closer than blindly clicking on your screen every time you see something.
Edit: None of this applies to "reading" your postion. When you log a waypoint its saved as a coordinate. Each unit on your boat stores that coordinate, and will base that navigation off of its own antenna. In otherwords, a waypoint you saved on the console units isn't going to be off any more if you read it on the bow unit than you would if you read it on the original console unit. The bow unit would use its own signal to get back to that "coordinate". You just have to remember to base your position on that object as the distance from the unit you are currently using to find it.
Attachment 71403
Thanks for the explanation TommyBass. I understand what your saying but it doesn't explain why when I marked the waypoint in my garage it wasn't based off what the transducer was seeing so it eliminated that margin of error. It would still drift 40+ feet from the waypoint. My $100 handheld doesn't do this.
Thanks Tenntomm, but my reply was more to people who were concerned / replying to you, not your original question directly :) As to that, they are not the most super sensitive receievers in the world. Obtaining a good signal in a garage is next to impossible on mine, but when out on the water I have no problem holding steady. Many gps units do not do well near any sort of building or object, even under tree cover. My Garmin handheld with the super sensitive antenna is the only one I can get good signal under heavy forests etc with. I wouldn't guarentee thats your problem, but I would think its a large possiblilty. I would say your irregularity is from cycles of brief signal strengths through your roof / garage door. Try it outside and see what happens.
I just ordered the LCG4000 antenna along with the 124-69 - Lowrance Network Starter Kit. I was finding it too hard to "Zero in" on my waypoints I had marked and I believe it is due to the refresh rate of the "in unit antenna". I hope it helps at least $250 worth. I plan to mount the antenna right above my LSS-1 transducer.
I also have a Garmin GPSMAP192 C that I've had for quite sometime now. I guess I should break down and install that thing too.
I dont know about the HDS units. I have an outdated LMS unit and dont ever have any problems finding my brush (waypoints), and it has an internal antenna. When I get close I idle with the zoom all the way in and go slow enough to allow the GPS to make boat location corrections.
TommyBass, you were right about the garage, i got a much better signal on the lake today. Another thing I cant fingure out is on the navioincs map I can only zoom in to 100ft . If I change the card to my lowrance hotmap I can zoom in to 50 ft. This made a big differnence in pinpointing waypoints. I wonder if I have something setwrong on the navionics. Also anybody know what Map Datum should be used for the navioincs card. I think mine is on the default WGS84
I have base map on the HDS7 and can only zoom to 50 ft. I have Insight maps on the HDS8 and can zoom to 20 ft. I have yet to get an answer about this. I questioned this phenomenon on Lowrance facebook. I believe billblb had zoom problems with the Navionics south chip, but when he switched to the Insight, zoom was fine. I may have misunderstood billblob though.
the chip will zoom in 50 ft. a lot of conture lines roads are a dottied line the insite hos great bridges and roads
I have the navionics in my -8- when it gets to 50ft,there are 3 more clicks--it zooms in each click but stays at 50 ft [the map is showing the zoom in]Quote:
Originally Posted by Cane Pole
So you hit your waypoints closer?Quote:
Originally Posted by Tenntomm
Yea it was much easier on the Lowrnace Hot spot chip because it would zoom in closer. I think this was most of the problem. Also I changed the overlay data to include Cross Track error and Distance to Destination, and even though I couldnt zoom any closer I could reference this information to see how far off I was.Quote:
Originally Posted by justinp61
What & how does Cross Track error & Distance help, I know just plain distance but not other.......Quote:
Originally Posted by Tenntomm
I never thought of looking in the data overlay for this. This alone should be a huge help. I figured this had to be in there somewhere, just coulldn't figure out where.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tenntomm
THe Cross track error lets you see how many feet off left and right of your target as you are approaching it head on. Because the zoom only goes in so far, it may look as the pointer is exactly on the waypoint but really you may be off L or R. If you use it combined with distance to destination you create a count down to a zero point.Quote:
Originally Posted by jaxsprat
When you open the data overlay page look for the GPS header and the Navigation header. There will be many data items that you might find useful for searching for waypoints.Quote:
Originally Posted by crappiemax
Thanks TennTomm I was wondering why there wasnt a DTG,now i know how to get it. Thanks Wilbur