Puckuliar Pucknomenon--GPS Pucks, Bluetooth Minn Kota Pucks, Evinrude Engine Pucks--What and Why?
It’s a puckuliar pucknomenon, our boats are all pucked up! But Why?
Not that many years ago, if a signal needed to be received it arrived through a metal antenna—retractable hollow metal tube or whip-style. Clear back in 1988 my old fish finder had an antenna on the dash next to the main sonar display and then individual antennae on each of the wrist LCD screens—yes, I had wrist-watch fish finders in my boat more than 30 years ago. And as whiz-bang advanced as those units seemed to be, they never caught on in the marketplace…heck, it’s easier to see a large screen on the dash than a small screen on your wrist!
Radio-Controlled Wrist Fish Finder in 1988...No Kidding...Now As Out-of-Style as Oversized Eyeglasses
As a certified Minn Kota service center, High Country Boats has seen some interesting older units come through the doors. The first Minn Kota remote controlled motors used a retractable radio antenna to receive steering and speed signals. That too fell by the wayside as the Power Drive motors with Autopilot took over the consumer market—wired foot pedal and all.
It wasn’t long after that when GPS became the navigation norm and our old Loran C nav units were relegated to dusty attic space—mine are still in the attic of my shop buried in dust and squirrel droppings. Some early GPS antennae looked like small radar receivers but that changed quickly and the GPS antenna reduced to puck-size by the mid ‘90’s. So most of us became familiar with the puck antenna via those ubiquitous GPS pucks. Why don’t’ our current fish finders have those pucks? Because modern fish finders have an internal GPS antenna. And if current fish finder models have the antenna built-in, why would anyone need a puck anymore? Well, in the case of my own boat, my bow fish finder/GPS is a model with an internal antenna that processes a mere 5 readings per second. The external puck antenna I added to my unit receives 10 positions a second and for cripes sake who doesn’t need a GPS position update every tenth of a second? Seriously, other than freaks like me, nobody needs a GPS puck for their fish finder anymore. The top-shelf models now have an internal antenna that receives 10 positions a second rendering the external pucks irrelevant. OK, so I have a 5 year old unit on the bow of my boat…burn me at the stake for such archaic witchcraft!
An Array of Pucks on the Author's Boat
But wait, I see plain white GPS pucks on lots of boats. What’s that about? If you’ve seen the new razzu Evinrude G2 outboard--the angular modern cowl with interchangeable color panels to customize or match the boat--well, those G2 Evinrudes have their own GPS puck available which feeds into the data stream for the engine. So when your Evinrude ICON II gauge tells you all kinds of info, including fuel range, mileage and various other time and distance measures, that’s because the Evinrude system uses it’s own GPS puck to acquire the data. Note that Mercury offers a similar GPS option to tie into their Vessel View and SmartCraft gauge systems.
And back to Minn Kota…Most of us understand that the i-Pilot motors use GPS for navigation, cruise control, autopilot and spot lock anchoring. So those Minn Kota pucks that come on the 2017 and newer Bluetooth model i-Pilot motors must be GPS pucks, right? Wrong! Minn Kota’s GPS receivers are internal. The external puck is actually a compass puck that tells the motor which direction the boat is pointing so the various systems can more reliably navigate or anchor. The pre-2017 i-Pilot motors did not have the external compass puck and the spot lock was more like “area” lock…wasn’t able to stay within a couple boat lengths in many instances. When I upgraded from a 2015 pre-puck to my current 2017 with the puck the accuracy and reliability of my Minn Kota went far beyond where it had been prior.
One of the reasons Minn Kota added the compass puck was to keep up with the MotorGuide Xi5. Though MotorGuide is not a major player in terms of market share, their spot lock was so much better than Minn Kota’s that it was an embarrassment for Minn Kota and their parent company, Johnson Outdoors. So Minn Kota added the compass puck to combine compass and boat direction data with the GPS data and the end result is quite impressive. Right when the new compass puck model Minn Kota Terrova came out, I got one on my boat. I spot locked side-by-side with a customer and his Ranger 620 with the MotorGuide Xi5. We had a nice breeze and our boats stayed side-by-side without budging from the spot (we were fishing a sunken island with an abrupt edge that required tight tolerances on the anchoring).
So is the compass puck automatically effective? Only if you turn it on each day! Many owners of new Minn Kota’s don’t understand the importance of the puck and don’t understand that it has to be paired with the main electric motor via Bluetooth signal. There is a small button on the puck that you push. On my ’17 model the button lights up red. Later models now use blue for the color of the lighted button. With the motor deployed and turned on you simply give the GPS within the motor a half a minute to initialize--just like it takes your fish finder a few seconds to initialize—then you push the button on the puck. The lighted button will start flashing on and off every couple seconds. Then you push the “Pair” button on the head of the motor itself. It will give a rapid beep, beep, beep signal to indicate that pairing was successful. It stays paired even when the motor is retracted and stowed as long as you don’t turn off the power button on the motor. So basically, each day on the water you need to pair your compass puck with your motor. The Bluetooth pairing disconnects when you turn off the electric motor power button at the end of the day.
Some people may have the compass puck, but if they are not turning it on, they aren’t getting the precision spot lock anchoring they could be getting. Be a good pal and help your buddy who doesn’t know about this pairing stuff. If you are an invited guest on someone else’s boat, it’s in your best interests to have the boat perform at it’s best and optimizing the bow troller by using the Bluetooth pairing. It’s simple and it works!
As technologies continue to advance and downsize, it’s inevitable that the compass and GPS pucks of today will go the way of retractable radio antenna’s on fish finders and trolling motors. But for boating today, the various pucks offer benefits that many of us enjoy. If you feel left out and have no puck of your own, stop in at High Country Boats. We’ll set you up with the appropriate puck for your boating lifestyle.