Just a 10 foot in diameter circle when in fact I got a 30' in diameter circle. Kinda hard to vertical jig when you are constantly moving 15 feet one way or the other. You sure can't fish tight to the brush with it on Spot Lock. Again for schooling hybrids or sandbass this would be exceptional. For finicky crappie that don't always want a moving bait it just isn't there yet. If it were more responsive and turned quicker to stop itself instead of running on by and then drifting back the other way and then drifting on by, line staying at 45-60 degrees at all times instead of at a 90. Just wasn't a 5' circle. I guess I wanted it to be an anchor more or less. I can control a cable drive better. To each his own. Glad we all don't like or do things the same way.

Bobcat I have to agree with you. Everything else works great but spot lock is not what I expected it to be. It does help when I have to do something else(re-tie, eat a snack, pee of the back of the boat, etc) but I don't use it when fishing brush piles or submerged timber

Just FYI, that is completely incorrect.

Just FYI but......no it isn't. Even military GPS systems have an +/- error of more than a few feet. The very best civilian GPS systems are only accurate to within about 9 feet. Of course the way they cut that down is to take several readings per second and display an average of that. There are also ways to augment the accuracy such as WAAS (which is what most of our fishfinders use). However as to the accuracy of the actual signal itself, it's only presise down to about 10 feet in perfect conditions.

After the government launches the new IIF satellites the best you can expect is a +/- of about a meter or 3 feet still. As it stands now with todays crappy satellites from 2000, in the best conditions possible you're looking at a few METERS of GPS wandering.


http://pnt.gov/public/faq.shtml


How accurate is the Global Positioning System?

The U.S. Government is committed to providing GPS to the civilian community at the performance levels specified in the SPS Performance Standard. For example, the GPS signal in space will provide a "worst case" pseudorange accuracy of 7.8 meters at a 95% confidence level. The actual accuracy end users can expect depends on factors outside the government's control, including atmospheric effects and receiver quality. Real-world data show that some high-quality GPS SPS receivers currently attain better than 3 meter horizontal position accuracy.

While incredibly educational, what does that have to do with the slow response time from signal to actual turning of the unit to return to it's location? I never had a problem with knowing where it was supposed to be, just with it staying there. What I mean is that it waits to long to return to it's mark or anchored location. Manually the mechanically head moves to slow whether with a remote or foot control. It certainly can't react any faster than the unit is capable no matter how good the GPS signal. Anyway I will back out of this forray and let the more intellectuals discuss it. Bottom Line I did not like mine. The guy that bought it does. So there you have it.

I don't understand why this is so hard to comrehend.....

Get you some chalk. Go outside and mark an X right where you're standing. We will call that X "brushpile". Now draw a 3 foot circle around you. You are now looking at how accurate the very best GPS systems are, some of the time. Now draw a 9 foot circle around yourself. You are now looking at how accurate the average GPS with WAAS will be, most of the time. Now randomly mark an Y anywhere in that circle. That's your trolling motors reference point, and in real life that reference point is constantly drifting from 3-20+ feet. Now Y might very well be at the very edge of your 9 foot circle. Now draw a 10 foot circle around your constantly moving Y. That's what your trolling motor is going to keep you inside of.

So now that we all understand how GPS and spotlock work, it becomes apparent that it is IMPOSSIBLE to stay within 5 feet of X, all of the time. It is however possible to stay within 5 feet of Y, most of the time. Just because you can see that you are further than 5 feet away from X, does not mean that your I-pilot can.

I completely agree that it would be cool as hell if spot lock would keep you within 5 feet of where you initially set it. However todays satellites do not allow that to happen. Now with that said, Minn Kota uses the same type of word play that every GPS manufacture does. Almost every GPS on the market claims to be such and such accurate. What they fail to mention is that this accuracy is a percentage of what the actual accuracy is. For example, a WAAS enabled GPS will only be accurate to within about 9 feet, 95% of the time. It's only going to be accurate to within 1 foot about 5-10% (or less) of the time.


I hope this sufficiently explains to you why spot lock will not hold you over your 4 foot wide brushpile.

Raiderland

Thanks for the info. very informative for me anyways. Getting the I-pilot and look forward to it.

This is yes or no topic.
Ive got one but not used it yet.
From what Ive read from all the avail sources is best if gps has power before deploy. So I am quessing the best avail spot lock would be as many navigational tools as possible. external puck internal puck and the Ipilot along with hotmaps chip all working together.
That being said not sure how to make that happen....
Reason it is not even mounted yet.
if anyone has input on this please let us all know.