Ken Sauret and Team

Long story. I’ll try to keep it short.

I received my HDS-8 late this spring…late enough that I only had two weeks to get familiar with it before I needed it.

There are a number of functions that are the same as my ol’ trust X-19, but worked differently in the navigation menus.

I rely heavily on my gps to take my clients and I home at night. (Good boaters always use two forms of navigation)

Since my route that I’ve refined over the years was uploaded into the Lowrance, I knew it was good, but the GPS would point me into the rocks…in my mind it just wasn’t working. I was sending screen shots to Ken from darn near each time out showing the unit wasn’t working.

To be honest I was so ticked off, I used email because my comments were not fit for human consumption.

Ken and the team of service folks kept their cool and worked with me through all of this. Although I believe I had them stumped for a short time, they came through with clear directions on why it was doing what it was and how to correctly operate the unit.

Guess what, it works perfectly once a person knows how to operate it!

The high definition screen and sonar is awesome and now with a dependable gps navigation my trusty old X-19 is history.

Toss in a LakeMaster chip with the wing and closing dams and the Sirus Weather option to automatically let me know of approaching storms and lightening…I’m truly a happy camper.

To Ken and J…thanks for the time spend.

Care to share what you were doing wrong?

I was hoping to get by without that!

The biggest problem was that I was SURE it was the unit and not ME!

Problem 1) I named my routes from the start to the end. Example: If the start was at Everts Fishing Resort and ended at Lake Pepin, the route would be named Everts to Pepin. When this route would be started, it would actually start at Pepin and go to Everts. I needed to press the REVERSE button to actually go forward…if that makes any sense.

The problem was somewhere along the line and maybe when I converted this route to the ‘bird format each waypoint of the route acquired a () around it. I’ve gone back and eliminated the ()’s and I now have the correct direction. I could have just changed the name of the route also, but I didn’t like the ()’s.

P2) When traveling at 20 mph or so the steer screen and the chart screen wouldn’t refresh fast enough and I ended up looking at a white display with no directions.

I found out what OVER ZOOM is. Zooming out to the highest level of 500 ft cured that issue. My X-19 was set at .15 mile or about 800 feet.

P3) If I wanted to start in the middle of a route, I would be directed to one end of the route or the other to start. This is not good when there’s an island or in one case a city in the way!! I couldn’t just pick up the closest waypoint of the route and go from there (like my 19 did).

By using the skip feature, I can just keep pressing skip button until the unit directed me to the closest waypoint and then it takes me home.

I always check my route back in the daylight when heading out cat fishing. Coming back in the dark and finding out a gps isn’t working is not a good thing. It’s been spot on since making the corrections to the waypoints and my head.

Danny Dorn has been a fantastic help too!

Thanks Bro!

Anytime Brian!