Marine Electronics Archives - Page 5 of 10

Choosing the proper electronic map can increase the odds of getting the most out of a trip to the Neuse River.

How to get the best cartography on your chart plotter’s screen

August 23, 2013 Allan Tarvid

Back when the earliest digital maps for freshwater lakes began to appear on chart plotter screens, I was struck by how different they were. […]

NMEA 2000-based networks are mapped out by with cabled backbones with T-shaped fittings located near electronic devices.

Can we talk?

July 22, 2013 Allan Tarvid

The National Marine Electronics Association is the organization responsible for setting standards for marine electronics, including those for communication between units. The purpose for setting communication standards is to provide a common language and wiring procedure so units and sensors from all manufacturers can talk to each other. […]

The evolution of LCD technology makes keeping screens more important than ever.

Keeping it clean

June 20, 2013 Allan Tarvid

LCD screen brightness, contrast and resolution improve with every new generation of marine electronics. Higher pixel counts, new sonar technologies, more-vibrant colors and improved visibility under adverse light conditions let us see tiny sonar and chart details that would have been invisible a decade ago without zooming to enlarge the screen picture. […]

The Aqua-Vu Claw Discover is the latest in the company’s line of underwater cameras, and it makes finding lost items much more feasible.

You dropped WHAT overboard?

May 22, 2013 Allan Tarvid

Shortly after handheld GPS units became small enough to fit in a pocket, I remember a fellow outdoor writer lamenting about losing his. He somehow dropped it as he stepped from a boat to a dock over water 30 feet deep. […]

There are many vacuum-sealing options to extend the shelf life of fish and game.

Vacuum sealer systems aren’t just for the kitchen anymore

April 22, 2013 Allan Tarvid

Eating dinner at a friend’s house almost 20 years ago, I mentioned how good fresh fish tastes compared to fish that was frozen. He told me with a grin that the fish we were eating had been cooling in his freezer for two years. […]

This new wrist wonder does a lot more than just tell time.

Super portable GPS

March 20, 2013 Allan Tarvid

When the press release about Garmin’s new marine-oriented Quatix sport watch hit my inbox, I opened it with lukewarm enthusiasm — but the more I read about it the more excited I got.

Two basic advantages of a watch with built-in GPS are that you don’t have to set it manually when you cross into another time zone and it can be accurate to within about a billionth of a second or, say, within one second every 30,000 years. […]

Torqeedo’s 80-horsepower electric outboard has plenty of torque to plane out boats

Is there an electric outboard in your future?

February 20, 2013 Allan Tarvid

We fishermen have seen all-electric boats come and go, but most of these vessels have been small, slow and had limited carrying capacity that make them best suited to ponds or protected lakes.

Electric outboard motors with from five to 10 horsepower are available from several makers, and electric primary propulsion outboard motor systems for open utility and pontoon boats have long been available from manufacturers like Minn Kota and Torqeedo. […]

There are plenty of settings that will tweak the way your depth finder looks, allowing you to customize your experience.

Semiautomatic fish finder operation

January 21, 2013 Allan Tarvid

In the early days of automatic fish finder operation, I advised serious anglers to switch to manual mode where they could tune in a much better look at the underwater world. I think that has changed, and I now suggest that fishermen run their units in auto mode and just tweak the settings where they see problems. […]

Touchscreen Lowrance electronics are smaller and easier to use than the old models that featured keyboards or buttons.

Lowrance introduces new touchscreen unit, custom contour mapping service

December 31, 2012 Allan Tarvid

Do you have a favorite fishing area that isn’t mapped as accurately as you’d like? Now you can do it yourself with any Lowrance HDS multifunction unit, including new models with touchscreen control. […]

All of the electronics anglers depend on require breakers, so knowing how to replace or reset these breakers is important.

Locating those pesky breakers and fuses

November 26, 2012 Allan Tarvid

The first thing that springs to mind when an electrical accessory stops working is a blown fuse or popped circuit breaker. In a new boat this usually means pressing the circuit breaker button next to the accessory’s switch or popping the cover off a box near the console and checking the fuse or breaker that protects the now powerless accessory.In the case of a used boat, especially if it has passed through several owners, this could be the start of an Easter egg hunt… […]

Being prepared and keeping a cool head during a boating emergency can prevent disastrous results.

The most important electrical impulses are between your ears

October 29, 2012 Allan Tarvid

Floating around for three hours with nothing but a Coleman cooler between you and drowning is enough to make a guy and his friends renew the commonsense boating habits they’ve let slide. […]

Minn Kota’s i-Pilot can hold a boat at a set distance from the bank or automatically hold the boat in one spot while the angler focuses on catching fish.

What the heck is trolling motor navigation?

September 24, 2012 Allan Tarvid

A July press release from Johnson Outdoors Marine Electronics begins, “Continuing the evolution of GPS trolling-motor navigation, Minn Kota’s i-Pilot Link utilizes GPS technology and ethernet connectivity to achieve new levels of boat control.”

Having attended a webinar on this new system, I was already thinking about how much that opening sentence is going to mean to fishermen. […]