GPS & Structure Mapping

[JimmyJ]

I am wondering now that selective availability(the government scrambled signal)has been turned off how marking a point or hump would work with my LMS 350A? I was thinking I could place an ICON on the screen at say 15 Feet around the area I am trying to learn and then going back and connecting the dots. Have any of you tried this now that the accuracy of GPS has been improved? What are some of the ways that you Maximize the potential of your GPS and sonar? Thanks, Jim

[Mike]

I have found that that works very well now that SA is gone. Another thing that I do is go out when it is calm and go around the structure with my pinpoint on depthtrack. Then I zoom out on the plotter to see the shape of the structure. When I go around the structure several times, the trail is almost exactly where it was the first time. This helps identify inside and outside turns, fingers, etc.

[Backwater Eddy]

In the menu options there is a on/off for averaging. I was told that you should have it off now to get a more acurate reading.

This may help you? I turned my averaging option off on my Garmin and it is way more on the mark then when it is on.

Backwater Eddy...><,,>

[Tideye]

I use my gps for marking structure edges and it works good. I have used waypoints to mark at a certain depth around the structure and then use it as a guide for trolling the structure. It works very good. You do have to get used to it because the gps seems to be delayed a bit. You need to watch it carefully and react slightly before what the gps shows. In my expirience it seems that it is accurate to about 20 feet most of the time.
You will want to turn off the averaging feature and the pinning feature. You will also want to set the update rate of the trail to a time based update and as frequent as posible. The beginning of the trail will dissapear as you use up the memory in your unit when set to update frequently but I have found this to be usefull in keeping the clutter to a minimum. Just dont forget to mark the boat landing and obstructions on the way back with waypoints because your previous trail wont be there.
This works almost as well as tossing out several floating markers to troll a piece of structure. The only difference is when you turn on a gps you dont have boats flocking to you :-( like when you toss out markers.

:-) good luck and have fun!
Jim

[JimmyJ]

Thank you for the information I appreciate that someone is willing to answer a post once in while !! Jim