Trolling motor warning!!!
Well, I have just purchased a Minn Kota Terrova ipilot. Today it was mounted on my Lund and tomorrow it will be placed in action. The handing sensor has been paired with the motor, so I should be ready, or so I thought.
The motor needs to be calibrated, whatever that means. So I decided to look at a bunch of videos about the process. On YouTube you can see many demonstrations of circling the boat to the right twice to accomplish the calibration. Well, here is where care needs to be taken, in fact, a warning needs to be published. Most of these videos were produced in New Zealand and Australia, both Southern Hemisphere countries. So it stands to reason the the direction of the turns of the boat have to be in the opposite direction, right (correct, don't want to confuse anyone)? My motor is a Northern Hemisphere motor; I'm sure the Aussies had one from the Southern Hemisphere. Down there magnetic north is way off, so the heading compass has to be calibrated with the motor completely differently than in the USA, where we are a lot closer to the North Pole. So I guess I will just turn to the left twice and then go fishing!!!
My grandmother told me that if you took all the ingredients to make a cake, dumped them in a bowl, and beat them together in a clockwise direction for 100 beats, and then reversed the process for 100 beats in a counter clockwise direction, the ingredients would separate back to the original mixture in the bowl. We all know she was right......and she did not raise a dummy (me) !
So tomorrow I will hit the water and turn left a couple of times. I might even film it......just to confuse those Southern Hemisphere gloats !!!
;-)