fastguy what is your thoughts on my concerns about the shallow situations where I need to some times pull up the trolling motor to where it's barely in the water? Does this seem possible with this unit?

Chad, it is not as easy to pull up this motor when you are in shallow water compared to using models that use a rope. But with practice it's not a big problem and for me the benefits of iPilot outweigh the small differences.

When you install the i-pilot, you lose the ability to use the foot control. You have to completely uninstall the i-pilot and install your foot control. I thought that would be a HUGE problem so I put in a switch to have both. I rarely switch to footcontrol.
If you go with the I-Pilot you could do this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXn1ZkzVS2g

I saw that today mo-sin. Cool stuff.

So how do you guys fish when you have to keep using the remote to steer your way down into a creek? I don't see how the remote would be beneficial for this. I wanted to get this because of the lock on function for when I want to stay on a spot when fishing deep. Not sure that would make it worth it if I have to keep using a remote to control my direction and speed when shallow fishing a creek.

Talk me into this guys! I wish I could try this thing out before buying it.

I just got back from Gibbons and was playing around with the i-pilot and the foot control. When I first installed everything, I threw the foot control in a compartment because I didn't think I would be using it. Your comment had me wondering about it.

I connected the foot control and started using the remote. Set it to autopilot along a fixed direction and then put the remote down. After a few minutes, I used the foot control to change direction. It worked fine. I then used the foot control to change the speed. That worked fine too, and the new speed was updated on the remote screen.

So you can use the remote and the foot control together if you want to.

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On the topic of changing the height. This is a snap. I forgot how the height was set before. It's a big knob screw that you can loosen and then raise the pole and then tighten again. You have to reach out over the bow if you want to do it while it's deployed. It's even easier if you have it pulled up and docked and the cradle.

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Finally, the transducer works well with my Mark-5X that I have up front.

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Now if only I could find the fish!!! Then all these fun toys would be even more fun to play with.