GPS / Sounder Deal

[Captain Steve]

Got my Seachamp late on friday, bought a clamp on antenna mount. Will put the GPS antenna on the starboard rear stanchion and route the wire down to the cable group off the engine, and up to the pedistal. Should be a location with a clear view whether the bimini is up or not, and out of the temptation to grab as we enter the stern on the port side.

[Duane Dunn, Allegro]

Hope the installation has been going well. Here are my pics.

The Eagle SeaChamp 2000C DF with Navionics Gold+ Chart at the pedestal.



The GPS antenna along with my new all around LED light and the VHF antenna on my transom mount mast crutch/radio antenna arm.

All the antennas fold down out of the way so the crutch can still be used to carry the mast.

The all around light has two functions. When out without the mast it meets the need for a forward facing white light when under power which is normally filled by the light on the mast. It also replaces the rear facing requirement which I just blank out when out without the mast. The LED's very low current draw also let's it be used as an anchor light at night.

[Bobby T.-26X #4767]

i'm in!!!
just ordered the unit and the gold+ for the west coast (which includes baja).
"6 months, same as cash" baby!





Bob T.
"DaBob"
'02X w/ '04 90-TLDI & '06 2.5-Suzuki
Eagle SeaChamp 2000C DF with Navionics Gold+ Chart

[Bobby T.-26X #4767]

Capn' Steve and Duane:

ready to install the GPS pod and am disappointed that the connector requires a 1" hole. real bummer.
i want to mount on top of my arch and run the wire inside the 1.25" stainless steel tubing.
it is feasible, but snug & alot of trouble.

Duane...how did you enter the cabling into the rear berth for eventual access to the center helm? that is, did you drill a 1" hole thru the fiberglass?

[Duane Dunn, Allegro]

I drilled a 1" hole in the starboard side of the transom and ran all 3 cables in there, the Depth/Temp transducer, the speed transducer and the GPS antenna. I covered it with a clamshell cover at roughly a 45 degrees forward angle. I already have a similar penetration for my VHF cable. The clamshells protect well from everything except immersion, and if the whole transom ends up under water there are two even bigger holes for the motor and steering cables already there. The clamshell gives better protection than these wide open motor cable holes.

I feel your pain about the arch. I wanted to run my GPS cable inside my mast crutch / antenna arm as well. Drilling that big of a hole for the connector wasn't an option. At this point I just cable tied it every 6" to the outside. I may still put it inside. It shouldn't be that hard to cut the cable, fish it through, solder and shrink wrap the splice. Still it's a shame to cut a brand new cable. I'm surprised they don't ship some sort of removable end.

[Captain Steve]

I am mounting both the sonar and speed sensors on the starboard side....away from the ladder and feet. I plan to run the wires up the transom and into the existing opening that the cables for the engine go through. The anntenna clamped onto the rear starboard stanchion, zipped tied down the stanchion and that cable joined the others and on up to the pedistal. Pics soon, our camera is off with the kids!

[Captain Steve]

Duane,


did you need to shim the speed sensor at all? Was the angle against the transom OK?

[Bobby T.-26X #4767]

i'm going to 5200 adhere a piece of white marine starboard (or a Walmart cutting board) on the transom at the locations of the two sensors (as i currently have).
that way screwing thru the transom is not necessary.

at this point i am not planning on shimming for angle.

[Duane Dunn, Allegro]

We're back from our first outing with the new GPS/Sounder. We were out in the South Sound for 6 days. This gave it a good test in a lot of conditions.

The Navionics maps are great. I did find one issue however. The embedded tides and currents in the chart don't reflect daylight savings time. For instance on the passage back north through the Tacoma Narrows on 8/18 the book shows slack before ebb at 4:00pm. The Navionics current display for the same place shows slack before ebb at 3:00pm. Changing the local time setting for DST on or off does not change the times displayed on the screen. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this issue. Obviously the tides and currents don't spring forward or fall back. The question is if the little pop up current arrows with the speed shown are accurate or a hour behind during DST. I've got to think more about this puzzel before I decide they are really wrong. Any idea's?

I also was disappointed that the sounder lost the bottom in really deep water just like my old one. Both the 50kHz and the 200kHz lost the bottom in over 300' of water. Obviously not a navigation issue, but I expected the 50kHz transducer to be good up to 1500'. This may still be a configuration issue, but I think I have everything set up right. When I am on the dual frequency sounder page both depths go wacky in the deep water. As soon as I get back in 200' or less they return and work fine.

I did not shim the speed transducer and it worked fine. It's mounted with the bottom edge right down where the transom rolls into the boat bottom. Having the speed through water to compare to the speed over ground is great and can be quite eye opening. I was surprised at times how much difference there was. It explains a lot of strange times in the past where I would not be getting the speed I expected or getting more speed than I expected for a given rpm. There were times I was getting 1+ knot current help on this trip where I wouldn't have expected it. It also clearly showed us bucking a 2.5 to 3 knot current against us when we left Gig Harbor for Pt Defiance. I still ned to calibrate it in a known no current situation to make sure it is measuring right on by the GPS.

Having the big map with all the detail info overlays is great. Check out the prediction line and the range rings. My routes from Memory Map worked great and I put distance and time ETE down at the bottom of the screen so the kids no longer have to ask are we there yet. It took me a bit to figure out that if you scroll around the cursor a bit you need to push exit to get it back in moving map mode with the boat in the center. If you don't do this your map will stay on the screen you have scrolled to and the boat will sail off the screen. I was also able to bring the .usr file back from the GPS and import into Memory Map. It has all the track data stored with each day as a separate named segment. You should save every few days to a separate SD card (not the chart one as you can't put the chart one in your PC without messing it up). It looks like at the default trail setting you get about 50 Nm of tracks before it starts to overwrite. If you reduced the interval you could get more in a file.

[Frank C]

. . . I'm still trying to wrap my head around this issue. Obviously the tides and currents don't spring forward or fall back. The question is if the little pop up current arrows with the speed shown are accurate or a hour behind during DST. I've got to think more about this puzzel before I decide they are really wrong. Any idea's?

Duane, there's an easy fix.

Buy a digital, auto-setting, stick-on clock for the pedestal,
and label it "People time."

Set the GPS to permanently remain on PST,
and label it "Boat time."

[Captain Steve]

Thanks, DD, test fitted all parts and now will mount. Waitning for my chip to come from defender!

[richandlori]

i'm in!!!
just ordered the unit and the gold+ for the west coast (which includes baja).
"6 months, same as cash" baby!





Bob T.
"DaBob"
'02X w/ '04 90-TLDI & '06 2.5-Suzuki
Eagle SeaChamp 2000C DF with Navionics Gold+ Chart

Way to go Bobby....I can see you saying it....""6 months, same as cash" baby!"

[Bobby T.-26X #4767]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this issue.

Duane...it's "wrap my ARMS around it".
but i like your info and enthusiasm!

obviously, a lot to learn about this new toy as i'm finally able to understand all the functions on my current GPS (or previous one now).

regarding depth...it's not an exact science regardless of what depth they promise. as i recall...there's a disclaimer in the fine print about accuracy.
however, i dont' know if that's the problem.

Bob T.
"DaBob"
'02X w/ '04 90-TLDI & '06 2.5-Suzuki

[Bobby T.-26X #4767]

Way to go Bobby....I can see you saying it....""6 months, same as cash" baby!"

believe it baby!
BTW... i enjoyed the photos of you trip north. i want to try in an X (10pm to sunrise). yea, right.

[Duane Dunn, Allegro]

Frank,

I'm not hung up on the local time displayed in the GPS, I'd probably just switch to Zulu time so there wouldn't be any confusion.

My issue is weather to trust the tide level and current arrow popups at any given moment. I'm guessing that they're correct, but I'm still not totally convinced. I need to watch it through a state change time and confirm that it changes from flood to ebb at the right time no matter what local time we overlay for display puposes.

I also had another thought, I'm going to change timezones and see what effect that has on the display. I want to know I can trust the pop up info and get the correct times for planning puposes when I select the detailed daily tide or current info. I'm thinking if I put the system into the mountain time zone without DST during DST months that it will show the correct info regading highs, lows, and slack currents as well as get the timing right on the chart popups. I really like how you can cursor over a current station and see the direction and velocity at that exact moment. The same goes for the tide state when anchoring. You get height info at that moment which helps in planning both how much minimum water you need to set in as well as how much scope to put out.

It really is much more of a wrapping my brain around it than my arms.