Flush mount GPS on the bow of a Ranger. Anyone have issues with reception?

[Waterfoul]

Do any of you have a Humminbird GPS mounted flush on your bow?  If so, do you have the internal antenna and does it hold the satelites o.k.?  I have a customer thinking about buying a new 'Bird for his brand new Ranger (hasn't picked it up from the dealer yet).  Did you have to add an external "puck" antenna for it?

[stackenem]

I have  one flush mounted on my Stratos and have no problems at all and yes it is an internal. I asked about that when I bought the unit and they said the attenna is thru the front of the unit.

[Waterfoul]

That's what I wanted to hear.

Anyone else?

[Firefighter Jeff]

  I have a 788 in the dash of mine and it works just fine.  Internal antenna. Stratos also.  I had to buy a HB flush mount kit that was a pain to install but I got it done.

[Rangerman]

I have an 788 and gps spins and can not lock a direction unless moving  on mid range TM, going to add ext ant. to hopefully cure the problem. Now the 998 on console works great with ext ant.. Front 788 is not flush mounted and still a problem.

[fiker]

I too have the 788 and have to sometimes move a bit before the GPS will pick me up and give info.  I sometimes have to move at about 1/2 TM speed, but once it picks it up I'm OK and can slow down. 

I thought it was just the nature of the beast. 

[Rangerman]

Installed ext ant and I almost cured the problem with gps lock. Well worth the extra $125.00 for open water hole fishings.

[djkimmel]

In the not too distant past, GPS readings close in were most accurate if you were moving about 3 mph. It seems to have gotten even better than that. I'm not sure how much better though. So many of the units lock in extra satellites if a lot of sky is visible unlike the original days of GPS.

Were mostly flat here in Michigan so we should be able to lock in lots of satellites while some places with lots of mini-mountains, like parts of North Carolina?, might not provide connection to as many satellites because lower  angle satellites might be blocked by big hills.

I will have to get a refresher course at some point because I've noticed my latest phone does a much better job of keeping contact with enough satellites even in partially and mostly blocked places whereas older phones (and my older GPS handheld) couldn't get a minimum 3-satellite lock, or any satellite lock often in similar or the same places.

I have a satellite location screen on my handheld and I've noticed when I was traveling in the past if lots of satellites were more out to the periphery of the sky map I could expect more problems with good signals. Might be helpful to have access to a map like that wherever you fish most to look at.

If your map shows few good line-of-sight satellites overhead you probably want to consider only external antennas. Otherwise you can probably be fine with an internal antenna. I bet there's an online resource that can be used to look up local GPS satellite locations. I'll have to add finding that to my todo list.

I will be embarrassed if I find out I too far behind the latest in GPS technology so I'm definitely adding that to my todo list. I don't want to completely lose my nerd card!