the units that take external batteries are not NEARLY as waterproof as the units that have the rechargeable batteries inside. That's multiple experience right there.

well its not so much the batteries themselves - I could care less - its more an issue of the battery door and the ubiquitous "Tawd fix" for the band/pin issues on all the foretrex units. On the 201, we take liquid nails and "glue" the band to the unit so when the pins do pop out of the housing, the unit isn't lost to Neptune. On the 301+, you'd have to glue it to the battery door, which would make taking the batteries out quite ... difficult.

the battery door leaks like a sieve so it doesn't matter if you can keep it connected to the band or not. It will be shot after one day of wet sailing.

Anybody care to list the units readily available on the market that ONLY have speed AND compass? The Discontinued SC-1 has that in limited mode but has pinging and VMG in deluxe mode. How do you make a competitor not use the different features or know they didn't? That would be the only one I know of.

Funny, this thread has turned into a tangent of a tangent (debating gadget models vs. whether they should be allowed at all vs. Canadian champs coverage)...

Eric, I love the 11/64" nuts reference!

Mike

All the Velocitek devices can be run in various degraded mode. From completely blank to just compass, to compass and speedo and then VMG/Start line and other niceties.

same with the Nova Sail unit. It has a "class mode" that disables the gps functions.

and i have impellers on my cat, but i promise only to use them when i am losing a race, and no one will see me

Re. GPS mounting, here's my homemade setup:




Unit self-tacks with mast rotation. Display is easy to read by the helmsman from well back on the hull, even trapped out on the 10 ft beam Tornado. This is the Sail Nauteek SC200 .

On short bouy type courses, I think less is more, get your head out of the boat, look for the next shift, puff, etc. rather than looking at your instruments which will only show you what just happened, not what is about to happen...

On a longer course, where you cannot eyeball the A mark or on an empty horizon where you cannot see the shore to notice a slow headder, a compass is essential, and speed is nice, but you may spend too much time watching the numbers vs. watching for the next shift.

This sport is a lot like flying airplanes, you have to keep your head on a swivel and be scanning everything, all the time, gliders now have an audio Vertical Velocity Indicator so the pilot can hear a tone which changes from low to high pitch as he gets into or out of lift, so he can keep his eyes outside looking for...other gliders!

Sure I would love to have such a system on board but I'm not sure it would make me a whole lot faster, the really fast guys can see the shifts coming and tack before they get there. If you wait for your compass to tell you, well...you're late.

There is a provision in the class rules for distance races and GPS, for the F18 fleet anyway.

Did anything official ever happen with this?

Not yet Bob. I know John submitted the write up for the technical committee but I haven't seen anything from the fleet regarding a ruling. Should be very soon though.

I don't believe there will be a rule change. If there is, it might not be until 2012. The current rule isn't worded the best, but it is what we have for now.