Lowrance HDS-? Anchor Alarm

[sinnettc]

Can anybody explain to me how you set the Anchor waypoint for a Lowrance HDS plotter if you want to use the anchor alarm?

It seems to me that it uses where you were when you turned on the alarm. Given that you've got to dig 3 layers deep into the menus to enable the anchor alarm that seems kind of silly. Not to mention difficult to do from the bow!

What I expected was that I could drop the anchor, mark a waypoint, then set the anchor alarm to that waypoint. The manual is zero help . . . does anyone know if there's a way to do that?

 

[tommays]

You have to spend time playing with ANY GPS to get good at using its features

 

[sinnettc]

True, but it helps if the manual actually explains the settings. It devotes about a page to the alarms and nothing is said about how to specifically set the anchor alarm.

 

[Bill Roosa]

Set the alarm limit from the alarms page
To set alarm limit:
1. Highlight the desired alarm on the alarm screen and press Menu.
2. Select Set Limit and press enter. The Alarm Limit keypad will appear.
3. Input the desired alarm threshold and Set limit then press enter.

Seems pretty easy to me.
Now if you are wanting to know what the limit actually is you would need to know a couple of things;
where you where in relation to the location of the anchor when you set the alarm
how much rode you put out

What you are setting is the distance from the spot the anchor is placed. So if you hit the alarm as the anchor hit bottom and put out 100 ft of rode you should set the alarm for 100 ft. This sets a circle CENTERED ON THE ANCHOR that is 200 ft in diameter and as long as the GPS antenna stays inside of that the alarm will not sound.
Course if you forget and set the alarm after you get done backing down the circle is now CENTERED ON THE BOAT and you have to adjust ether the location of the circle center or make the circle bigger so the alarm does not sound from the boat just swinging on the anchor as the wind shifts.
100 ft in this example does not account for GPS error (+-30 ft) so you would probably want to bump the limit up to 130. It all depends on if you have DGPS (+-10') or regular GPS (+-30') or any augmentation from land/sat based GPS transponders (<=30 cm) and that changes by unit and location

 

[sinnettc]

Ah, ok, so it is from where you turned on the alarm. Pretty sure my old Magellan handheld let you pick, or adjust, the waypoint so you could set it after the anchor drop. I'll just work around it as you suggested.

Thanks.