GPS position cursor – direction of travel

When going fairly slow my HDS with the internal antenna doesn’t seem to be able to keep the boat cursor on the screen pointed in the actual direction I am traveling. Is there a way to calibrate the unit so that the pointer changes direction when the boat turns as if it was a compass rather than having the pointer direction dictated by the changes in GPS coordinates?
I wasn’t sure if this is possible with the internal antenna or if it would be an option with the external antenna.

The GPS needs to calculate track by actual position, it does not have an internal compass. You can turn off GPS track smoothing, that seems to fix the delay in direction changes while moving slow.

How slow are you going? I would say no there really is no way calibrate it. The antenna can’t tell the difference between the back of the boat and the front. So when your going really slow it just thinks your sitting there until you get far enough away that it can tell your moving.

I guess the only other thing I can think of is to get the 4000 puck. It sposed to update your position 5 times a second instead of 1 time a second for the internal antenna. I haven’t any experience with the 4000 puck but I’ve heard it’s way better that the 3000 puck.

Jeremy

Jeremy hit the answer right on the head. An LGC 4000 udates your position so much faster you will notice a difference right away. This is even if you are only on your trolling motor. Other advantages to the 4000 is the speed that it locks onto satalites and it holds the lock much better. The 4000 can be mounted right next to a head unit also. This is important because when you set a waypoint you are setting the waypoint at the position of the antenna, not the head unit. The antenna is the device that has the lock on the satalite.

Last year I had a 3000 and this year I have a 4000 so I’m talking from personal experience.

Thanks!! I didn’t expect that there was an internal compass but had to ask

Looks like a 4000 will be added to the wish list.

I think you can also change the refresh rate of your gps unit to update more often.