2016 G retrofit paddle wheel

[Laptom]

We are always boarding on a river. No problem with my old skool Perfect Pass, but when driving with my friends 2016 G21 it drives us crazy. We have a curly river with bridges and the river mode on a curly river is nowhere accurate.

Is it possible to retrofit paddlewheel on a 2016? I know it is on 2018 linc systems.

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[SilentSeven]

I know nothing about retrofits but am surprised to hear that a 2016 G has a Perfect Pass and not a Zero Off. Do they still install Perfect Pass Stargazers on late model new boats?

[Scooter G]

I've never used the river mode, never had to. Interesting, what is it doing? Too fast, too slow, or all over the place?
SilentSeven, I think Laptom meant his boat has a PP, not his Buddy's G

[Laptom]

Sorry, our 2007 230 has the latest PP, which is perfect for our use.
My friends 2016 G21 has indeed Zero Off GPS with a calculated river mode. The idea is you laydown for a minute and let the boat drift. You calculate the drift and add or substract the drift to your speed. On the Linc you only need to point out if you are going up or down stream. But current is never 1 value...

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[Jonny Quest]

Use RPMs instead of GPS speed.

[SilentSeven]

Scooter G - sorry if this is captain obvious....GPS will give you your speed over land...which works great if the body of water does not have a current. If the water is moving aka a river, if you are going upriver your speed over the water is too fast (land speed plus current speed) or if downriver....too slow (land speed minus current speed). A 2 mph current creates a 4 MPH variation between your up and downriver runs. Significant!

River mode is where a GPS system uses an offset to get the correct speed over the water. On the stargazer system, if I recall, the paddlewheel provides the correction. It seems that on the Zero Off, there's some mechanism where the system attempts to estimate the current during a brief float then applies a correction based on boat direction up or down current. The OP mentions that the river they are riding on is curvy and I suspect that the estimated correction is not really very accurate as the current varies based on where they are in the river. I doubt there's a good fix for this within the Zero Off system. If anyone would know, I think it would be the folks at ballofspray.com as they'll be Zero Off experts and course skiers need speeds dead accurate.

Interestingly...a paddlewheel system works fine on a river as it always measure speed over water so it doesn't need any river correction. It's just the GPS based systems that have this challenge.

Jonny Quest has a really good suggestion for the G boat. Set the speed based on RPM and you should be about right regardless of direction.

[Scooter G]

Captain Obvious, lol. I like the analysis!
RPM makes sense, you can almost play that tune by ear. Perhaps the River Mode is a good go to for a slow constant current, but no bueno beyond that or for a constantly changing current. Sounds like maybe the GPS isn't the best go to for a fulctuating current, but looks good on paper. Sometimes old tech is still the good tech.

[SilentSeven]

Sometimes old tech is still the good tech.

Yup. This is me every day.

[jpwhit]

The speed control integrated into a G boat's LINC screen is "branded" Zero Off, but it's just a software implementation in the LINC screen. It really has no relationship to the stand alone Zero Off that's used for 3-event skiing or even the standalone Wake edition from Zero Off. It's completely different than the Zero Off in the 200 and Ski Nautique. For those boats, there is a Zero Head unit under the dash in the firewall. And the LINC screens on the ski boats talks to that Zero Off head unit. The stand alone zero off units do not have any support for paddle wheels.

It's certainly possible that the software speed control implemented in the G boat's LINC screen could have support for a paddle wheel. Especially if the original poster is correct that later model boats have this support. If that's true, then it may be possible to implement it on earlier boats by installing the right version of LINC firmware and right paddlewheel sensor. I would suspect on these generation boats, if this is really possible, that the paddlewheel sensor would be one that connects to the CanBus.