Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Marine GPS Devices

By Nia Lawrence


Having a global positioning system on your boat is very important. A GPS will not only be important for your navigation, it can be very useful for your safety and for catching more fishing as well. With the growth of the technology, brands like Koden have come up with many different kinds of units for different uses. Some units have fish finding capabilities apart GPS and chart plotting features. GPS is one of the tools that you should invest in when you are ready to equip your boat with marine navigation equipment. The following are some things you can consider when you are looking for a GPS unit for your boat.

Price determines many things, especially in GPS or marine navigation equipment. While the signal of GPS is freely provided by US government satellites, not only GPS units give equal accuracy and functionality. It is very crucial that you know what your price range for spending on these kinds of things will be. As with different units from brands like KVH, even the basic GPS units will still provide you decent longitude, latitude, and altitude readings for your present location. Nonetheless, if you want to have more functionalities as well as accuracy for your GPS device, you will need to shell out a little bit more money.

Likewise, aside from considering the prices of GPS units, it is equally crucial that you know what kinds of features and activities you will use for your device. There are many different GPS units that offer many useful marine navigation capabilities. If you are planning to use your boat for long-term fishing use, it could be a good idea to get a GPS unit from brands like Lumitec, which has a pre-installed fish finder sonar as well as other marine navigation capabilities.

There are a number of varieties of GPS units available in the market. If you are going to fish in large bodies of water during weekends, it will be good for you to use GPS units that can be mounted on your boat during your trip. Different brands such as Maretron offer mounted GPS units that can be later taken down for storage.

If you have a have a medium-sized boat and require more functionality, you can choose a mountable GPS unit from brands like Maretron. A mountable unit often offers more functionalities than the handheld units. They can be mounted on the boat and also taken down for storage. In the end, whether you get a mountable unit or a stand-alone chartplotter, you still need to make sure you have basic compass and map navigation skills as a backup.




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