I thought this might be of interest to some of you out there.
I have always found it overwhelming to try and learn all of the features of newer combo depth finders and GPS units these days.
Many years ago, during the Loran days of the 70's and early 80's, I owned one of the first combo units, an Impulse.
Great unit and boy was it user friendly.
Since then these things have really advanced and gotten way more features; and in the process, they have become really confusing on how to use.
At least to me.
Anyway, my son Jeff suggested that I fire that new HDS-8 up in the house at my desk.
We had an extra power cord that I bought so he could hook up his old HDS-5 1st Gen in a soft bag to use ice fishing.
Donna and I bought him the large soft bag for xmas this past year.
We also have a few of those small 9AH gell cell batteries.
So I did this Sunday after we got back from Lake Ontario.
Wow!
This allowed me to learn my new Navionics Plus card I bought.
I also took the opportunity to updated the software in the unit.
Something I knew needed doing but for some reason I never did.
Afterwards, I noticed the thing was showing the location of the unit as being at my home address.
***censored****?!?!?!?
I looked and sure enough, it had acquired signals of the satellites.
Inside my house!!!
A 2-story house and the unit is on the ground floor.
So this thing is shooting through the floor above my head, the ceiling of the 2nd floor above that, and then thru the attic and the roof above that.
WOH!!!
I was floored.
This was way cool as it now allowed me to really play with things.
I was able to do some waypoint work.
For the past 4-5 years I had always struggled at using waypoints on these newer units.
I could save them and label them.
No problem.
And I could navigate to one.
But not by using the unit's "go to" feature.
Not like I did many years ago on my old Impulse, which was very user friendly to operate.
I would simply watch the map and steer toward the waypoint on the map.
As I got closer, I would continue zooming in until I was "kinda" there.
I now have figured out how to do an actual "go to" using the unit like you are supposed to.
I also setup the Info screen the way I want it to look and now know how to access it and also set up the unit to show it as another window when I want to.
I suppose I could have always sat in my boat and done all this.
And I have always said, "I need to do that".
But the only time I was ever in the boat was out on the lake fishing.
Try learning these things out there, without the 2000 page manual.
(Even if you did have the manual - it would be difficult)
Doing it at my desk also allowed me to access the tons of Youtube videos that demonstrated a lot of the features and how to use them.
Anyway, last night I thanks Jeff for like the 2nd time.
And sitting here during my lunch today I decided to make this post for some of you out there that might be struggling like I was to learn their unit.
That power cord was like $25-30.
Not cheap. It's a friggen power cord for crying out loud!!!
We justified it by being able set up that old Gen 1 HDS-5 unit as an ice machine.
But I think that with what I was able to accomplish and learn in the last 2 nights easily justifies the cost of that cable.
Also the small gell cell battery.
Good luck.
Mac