Spotlock not working immediately

[JohnN]

I'm having an occasional issue where Spotlock won't work for a period of time after I turn my Ulterra (Bluetooth model that is 4 or 5 years old) on. I'll hit the water, turn everything on, and when I spotlock the system thinks we're spotlocked (i.e., it shows as spotlocked on the remote's screen) but the motor head doesn't move and the prop doesn't turn. As a result, I drift away from the spotlock (while the remote is tracking my distance from it - the motor knows we're getting further away).

Anyway, this is occasional and therefore especially frustrating. Sometimes I don't know that it isn't working right away. This only seems to happen on startup, and again it's not consistent. It never happens after spotlock starts working. And so far it seems like spotlock eventually kicks in and works fine.

As an aside, my spotlock also sometimes seems to be less accurate that it used to be. That is, it used to hold me dead on the spot and now I seem to drift a bit here and there but not much (and not as bad as the prior generation spot lock). This may or may not be related.

Any ideas? I'd thought that perhaps the GPS antenna isn't grabbed on, but that doesn't jive with the remote showing the distance to the spotlock. When this happens, it's more like the GPS is talking to the remote but not the steering components of the motor. I've also thought of my startup sequence, but that doesn't seem to make a difference either (I have a Helix 12 SI G2, Helix 12 DI G3, Helix 9 2D G2, MEGA 360 and MEGA Live all networked).

Any thoughts?

[TomP.]

I have had a similar issue for me usually comes from the prop not being turned on.

[JohnN]

Not sure I understand - you're saying that you need to have the prop running before you hit spot lock? It does seem like the prop and steering are both "turned off" when I'm experiencing this problem.

[bobcoy]

There is an”Auto Prop On” setting and it just sits there and looks dumb till you turn the prop on. Making the Auto prop on selection in setup will avoid that. You may not have that situation but you will usually will get some kind of error indication if it is broken and not just a setting. Bob

[ezfishn]

Sometimes settings may get changed back to default for some magical reason...LOL Might try adjusting boat scale to see if it will help keep you closer to spotlock location. Boat scale can also be adjusted to compensate for stronger winds or currents.