Dave Fortner fortner@conan.ids.net ================================================================ Review of Eagle AccuNav Sport: Cost: I got this one for $475 from Offshore Angler (800) 227-7776, since I ordered it before Apirl 15th they sent me a $50 gift certificate so it effectively cost me $425. Before I start my review I'd like to point out that I really like this unit and I feel that it was the best one available for my purposes in this price range. I'm always told that I pick everything apart too much, keep this in mind while reading this review. ================================================ The unit comes in a hard plastic case that's big enough to store 3 of them in, I assume the extra room is for accessories. It does not come with a bracket or power cable. Eagle charges $11.20 for the cigarette lighter adapter, I went to Radio Shack and bought 2 (P/N 270-1533, $3.99 each), one I use as intended, the other I cut the lighter part off and permanently wired in on the boat. I would have just bought a separate connector for the permanent power cable but I liked the molded plug (more corrosion resistant) on the adapter. Next, Eagle (in their rush to get the receiver on the market) doesn't have a mounting bracket designed or built yet. I made a bracket out of some heavy sheet metal (aluminum) which I primed with Zinc Chromate and I used Rustolium top coat. I then went to Home Depo and got a sheet of self adhesive felt which I applied to the bracket (so the unit doesn't get scratched). To attach the unit I used the Velcro sorta stuff that they sent with the receiver. So far it seems to work pretty well. The brackets shape is (poorly) depicted below. \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ /\ \ / \ \/ \ \ --------------------- \ When I received the unit from Offshore Angler there was a problem with the LCD display. It had a crack in it or it had a small piece of foreign material (hair?) in between the outside glass and the LCD. I went ahead and "played" with it that night (it was completely functional) and I called Eagle the next day. They said that I needed to return it immediately, if it was a crack, the dry nitrogen would leak out and I might have corrosion problems down the road. Sending it back was VERY simple, I just put it back into it's original box, attached the prepaid shipping label an drop it off at the UPS office (they'll also pay for UPS pickup). That was on a Wednesday, a new unit (they DID reuse the old serial number but it was a different unit) arrived back at my house 8 days later (round trip from central Florida to Oklahoma), I was disappointed that the unit had made it past Eagles quality inspectors but I'll have to admit that they did everything in their power to make it right. I was also pleasantly suprised that when I got the new unit back it had a newer rev of S/W which added a couple of features. I've asked about the availability of S/W updates for the unit, Eagle will upgrade the S/W for no charge anytime within the warranty period, after the warranty has expired (1 year) there will be a fixed rate (price?). The unit uses 6 AA batteries which install in a removable pack that slides onto the bottom of the unit. The dimensions (with antenna folded down) are: Height: 7.8" Width: 3.6" Depth: 1.7" The Eagle has raised keys, personally, I would prefer recessed keys like that found on the Garmin 75. The screen and keypad is backlite in red and the intensity of the back lighting is variable. Note: the backlight will only stay on for ~30 seconds if it's running on batteries. It'll stay on permanently if running on an external source > 9.0 volts. The low battery indicator comes on when the battery voltage drops below 6.0 volts. The Eagle has a battery saving function, the user has the ability to select the update rate, 1 second is the default (and the fastest) the possible choices are 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 seconds. On 1 second the unit uses up a set of Ray-O-Vac AAs in ~7 hours. I haven't used a full set of batteries on the 5 second rate but it appears to be MUCH better. One of the possible displays is a readout of source voltage. I've found this very helpful in determining how much time is left on the batteries and to determine if the cigarette lighter plug is making contact. I actually used it to determine that the alternator on my truck wasn't working. Eagle is supposed to come out with a "Patch Antenna Kit', this kit will allow you to remove the antenna and attach it remotely (on a suction cup mount) and the kit will include a cable to connect the antenna to the unit. This would be very useful for use in a car w/o buying a second antenna. Cost and availability is unknown. Their also going to be bringing out a s/w package (I ASSUME it's also gonna come with a cable) to upload/download waypoints to/from an IBM compatible PC. The Upload/Download function is already in the units menus. When the unit is turned on it displays a warning message, something to the effect that says that this unit should not be used as you sole navigation device (yeah, right!) and it flashes the basklight until the operator presses CLR (backlight goes off) or ON (backlight stays on continuous). The unit then goes into cold start or you can enter a Lat- Lon-Alt-Local Time-Date. If you enter the current location (or something close) it only takes ~30 seconds for it's first fix. If you let it cold start it'll take upwards of 15 minutes. After the first fix the unit will reaquire within 10-60 seconds (usually around 10 if it hasn't been to long and your close to the same spot where it was turned off). The screen is the largest and by far the highest resolution of any of the handhelds that were being displayed at the Miami Boat Show in February. The screen is 2.125"x2.125" and the resolution is 160 x 160 pixels. The resolution of this display is fantastic. Eagle calls the display "Windows", it's not really, but it is user configurable. There are 3, what I would refer to as "Main Screens", they are POSition, STeeRing and PLOT. On each of these screens you can select the information to be displayed with the primary item. On the PLOT screen, the operator may also display the plot as full screen. The POSition display shows the current Lat-Lon at the top in DDMM.MMM format. No other coordinate format is available. The other windows on the display are operator selectable. The STeeRing display shows the "bowling alley" on the top. The "alley" is graduated, it displays XTE (cross track error) as +/- 0.5 units (note: the unit of measure is operator selectable, it may be nm, mi or km and the speeds are displayed in comparable units) and DTG (distance to go) as +/- 0.5 units. The waypoint is marked with a "landing pad" (my term, not theirs) symbol. The PLOT display is just that, it plots your course as viewed from space on a plotter. North is always on top of the screen (east is on the right). Normally Lat-Lon is displayed on the top of the screen unless the operator selects "Full Plot" option on the menu or if the operator moves the cursor keys. If the operator moves the cursor keys (buttons with arrows) the numbers at the top turn into reverse video and the numbers represent the Lat-Lon of the cursor position. Also, when you do this 2 numbers are displayed in the lower left hand corner, these numbers are the distance and bearing to the cursor location. When the PLOT is NOT in "Full Plot", the additional display fields are user configurable. The plot ranges are 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 5.0, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500 and 1000 miles. With S/A active the 0.1 miles plot is virtually useless, I'm looking forward to using this when I switch over to DGPS. For use on a boat the 0.5 mi. scale seems to be the best choice. There are multiple symbols that are displayed on the plotter, first the waypoints are displayed, waypoint 1 would appear as hey appear as follows: ___ | 1 | | | | / A dashed line is also drawn between you current location and your waypoint. In addition to the waypoints there are icons you can display on the plotter. There is a "Land Based" and "Marine Based" "bank", the operator may display one "bank" or the other (not both concurrently). The operator can position an icon at the current position or at the cursor position. I don't know how useful this is gonna be, mainly because you can't erase a single icon, only all icons of that type (ie, all the little fish symbols). I'd like to see them modify it so you can erase one at a time. You have a total of 500 icons that may be stored, 200 waypoints and 20 routes. You can also save a plot and recall it. I wish they'd make a little modification here. North is always at the top, I wish you could change it so that the top of the display is the current course, this would be very effective in return navigation through islands or strange harbors when you weren't paying enough attention to the landmarks on the departure trip. Waypoints are easily saved/retrieved, you simply hit WPT and go through the menu. There is no "Man Over Board" function perse, what you have to do is (from any of the main screens) hit the WPT key twice, that selects the WPT menu and then selects the "Quick Save" option, OR you can just place an ICON on the screen by hitting ICON and the desire symbol. This unit is differential ready, setup for the differential signal is done through the on-screen menus. I do not have a differential receiver yet but the illustration that they show in the owners manual looks pretty neat. It also says that the DGPS status display will show a warning if the position is >8 meters more than 32% of the time. In summary, THIS THING IS GREAT!!! IMHO, there is no other unit on the market that comes even close to the features, useability and screen resolution that the Eagle AccuNav Sport has. I shopped around a long time before buying a GPS and I'm convinced that I bought the best handheld available in the <$1000 price range. I know this review is long (and still awful sketchy) but it's the best I could do in the time I have available. Please take it for what it's worth. If you have any questions please feel free to E-mail them to me. Dave Fortner fortner@hal.eng.ufl.edu ==================================================================== Here's the WS-1 review =================================================================== I recently got the PC Interface Kit (what Eagle/Lowrance calls WS-1) for interfacing with my Eagle AccuNav Sport. The kit can be purchased from LEI Extras, their phone number is (800) 324-0045 and costs $45.95. The kit contains a 3.5" floppy, a cable and the manual. The executable program is 261K bytes long and runs on an IBM PC/clone. The cable has the 4 pin custom connector on one end and a 9-pin serial (DB-9) plug on the other. The manual is short but understandable. The software runs under MS Windows 3.1 or higher. There is no Mac version available. Setup: I'm running it on a 386 w/387 which has 8M RAM. All operations appear instantainious. I first tried to plug the cable into my COM 3 port but the program didn't work correctly. I was aware that it might be a problem because some (most) PC Clones share the COM 3 interrupts with other functions. It work perfectly when I switched to COM 2 using a 9-25 pin adapter. When setting COM Port parameters use 9600,8,1,n. This suprised me a little because I thought that the standard NMEA baud rate was 4800. Operations: The PC I/F Kit can upload/download waypoint tables, route tables and icon tables to/from the GPS. When you first bring it up there is a blank spreadsheet. I started by setting the GPS to Upload/download mode then selected "Download" on the PC. The entire waypoint table is loaded into the PC, this operation takes 2-3 seconds. The waypoint spreadsheet contains the following info: Waypoint Number Waypoint Active indicator (astrisk) Latitude Longitude Waypoint Name You can edit or enter a waypoint by double-clicking on the row. This brings up a dialog box in which you enter the data. I really wish that it had a setup option which would allow you to specify a "seed" Lat-Lon to reduce the typing. Oh well, maybe they'll put it in the next release. After entering the waypoint data you clik on OK or hit and the waypoint. The software will only allow you to enter the correct number of numbers in the Lat-Lon fields. You don't have to type the deg symbol or the decimal point, only the raw numbers. Note that you MUST type all of the number. If you want 28 30.000 that's what you have to type. If you type 28 30 the lower digits (value) are corrupted (not correct). The software does check for invalid values in the Lat and Lon fields. I should note that a error dialog box is generated if the S/W detects an error in the degrees field, if the error is in the minutes field the value is rejected but the user is not notified. When entering the waypoint name you can type more than the 14 allowable characters, when you hit or click on "OK" the first 14 characters are shown in the spreadsheet. When you have the waypoint table ready you simply select "Upload" and it's sent to the GPS. Note: there is no indicator (hourglass) that shows that anything happened, you have to wait a few seconds then look at the GPS. When you upload a waypoint file the entire file is sent. The waypoint numbers that are not marked as active are erased in the GPS memory. This isn't explained very well in the manual. This isn't to bad because I'd probably always download from the GPS first before uploading, sorta like a temp backup in case I fouled things up in the file. The Eagle AccuNav Sport can display up to 500 icons. The WS-1 S/W can upload and download the icon position as well. Which icon symbol is determined by the position in the table. The first 100 are the first symbol, second 100 are the second symbol, etc, etc, etc. Of course you can cut waypoint coordinates from the waypoint table and paste them in the icon table. The icon coordinates are edited in the same way as wapoints (except they have no name). The neatest feature is the route table creation. You can upload/download route tables, the AccuNav Sport can have up to 20 routes with 10 waypoints in each route. The WS-1 S/W allows 12 waypoints per route, I assume that this is for other Eagle/Lowrance models. The route table contains Lat-Lon, number in table AND it shows the distance and bearing to the next waypoint AND the total distance in the route. This is GREAT for trip/route planning. Each time the route table is changed all of the distance and bearing data is recalculated. The distance is always in statue miles, the bearing is always in degrees true. You can create a route table simply by cut/paste from the waypoint table. Note: the waypoint name is not displayed in the route table so you may wanna keep a scrap of paper handy to keep track of what route you created, when the list is uploaded to the GPS the waypoint names are displayed. I tried out the waypoint upload to see what happens when you have 12 waypoints in your route (as I stated earlier, the S/W handles 12, the GPS has 10). The result is that the last 2 waypoints were simply dropped off the route table. Conclusion: Although it could be a little more "idiot proof", the PC Interface Kit worked flawlessy. It's very cost compeditive and easy to use. Overall it's a great accesory for my GPS and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in interfacing their Eagle or Lowrance GPS to a PC. If you have any questions please feel free to E-mail me at: fortner@conan.ids.net >