Mapping GPS or just a GPS

[Looking to buy a GPS]

Looking into the Eagle Journey Mapping GPS anyone have one? Pro's and cons of this unit opposed Lowrance 1600. Or isnt the mapping features needed for a weekend fisherman. Thanks for your feed-back.

[REW]

The weekend fisherman - NEEDS nothing more than a willow pole and a safety pin and cotton cord to catch fish.

What the weekend fisherman "Wants" however, is convenience in quickly knowing and exploring their fishing waters.

If you have the non mapping gps for a month - and then have a mapping gps for a month -- I guarentee you, you will never go back to the non mapping gps.

At a heartbeat - you can tell - exactly - Where --- on the body of water - that you are at any given time.

With a non mapping gps - if you put in coordinates - you can tell where you are from those coordinates - and that is all.

go for the map., \

Take care

REW

[Dave G]

Last year I spent a considerable amount of time investigating GPS units and put some of the more useful links I found on the Walleye Searchers fishing club's webpage http://www.walleyesearchers.com/GPSlinks.html

You can read about them forever and the technology is always improving. At this time many GPS nuts believe the best hand held mapping unit for hiking/autos/marine is the Etrex Legend -- you can read a review on it at http://www.gpsinformation.net/etrexlegend.htm The features do sound impressive but the screen is small and may be difficult to read while moving in a boat or car. If this is the case, you may want to consider one with a bigger screen.

Dave Gulczinski

[Trapper]

We just put an Eagle Journey in the boat. It's our first shot at using a GPS and so far, we're very pleased with the unit. The screen is easy to read and move around in. The mapping features are really good also. We've only used it a couple times so we're pretty green, however. So far, the only "problem" we have is that the ground speed indicator is very insensitive at low speeds. It doesn't display anything until it hits about 2mph and then cuts out at about 1.5mph. My buddie's LMS 350 GPS reads down to about .6mph. We may be able to fine tune the unit so I can't pass judgement on it so far. We bought this one because we didn't want the Lowrance mapping software just yet and the Journey is considerably lower in price with the same features as the 1600. Hope this helps.

[REW]

As far as the ground speed is concerned - I suspect that you have "pinning" turned on in the GPS setup menu.

Go into setup - and the GPS setup in particular.
Scan through the menu - until you get to "pinning" or "position pinning" - insure that this function is disabled.

If pinning is enabled - you will not get any speed change information - until you exceed a preset speed, or a preset distance from a former location.

With the discontinuance of SA - the use of position pinning is really unnecessary. However, there is one spot where it is rather nice to have pinning turned on. That is if you have the boat at anchor.

If you have the boat at anchor -- even with SA turned off - you will get a position change of as much as 20 meters. Typically the change is much less - but there might be a few times - where the position information - will show that you have moved up to 20 meters. In order not to keep your plot screen completely filling up with nonsense tracks - turn pinning back on. That way - you will display only your anchor position. And so long as you don't exceed the distance setup in the setup screen - the position mark will not repaint on the screen, and clutter up the screen with usless info,.

However, if you want precise speed info - for example while trolling or drifting - make sure that pinning is turned off.
Your speed info will be rather accurate - even at very slow speeds.

Take care

REW