Internal antenna or external antenna ?

[Wormdirt]

I am in the market for a gps locater also. I am installing it on the dash under my windshield. The guy at the store says it makes no differace what kind of antenna

it has. Is that true?

I am looking at the Eagle 502 for $450, it looks like a no frills version of the lowrance.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

[18 inch Crappie]

Internal is nice as far as space and mounting, but the puck will allways get better signal because you can place it out side of the windsheild. I have a 332c and love it, when I use it for ice fishing the puck gets in the way, but I have heard of people having the 334c and can not get good GPS some times. Hope that helps.

[Tony Holland]

I dont understand how the 334C cannot get signal?? I use a H20C in my car and it works, I think people mount a H2O on the dash of their boat and that seems to work......The H2O uses an internal antenna. I would assume that the internal antenna on a 334C is as good if not better than the interanal antenna on a H20.

I could be wrong but that is my 2 cents...

[Walleye Rueben]

I have an H2O. It works fine on the dash of my boat (Lund Tyee), but won't work at all on the dash of my van. I think that the extra enclosed area of the car roof is the problem, or maybe the angle of the glass in the van.

[mamohr686]

I have a chevy suburban and I can't get a gps reading when I use my unit directly below the rear view mirror. I belive the magnetic compass inside the rearview mirror makes the signal haywire. I moved my unit to the very far corner of the windshield and it works great after re-initializing it, you may want to try this also.

[Bushwacker]

There are a bunch of guys on a bass boat forum that have been having trouble with the internal GPS receivers. There was talk that Lowrance was exchanging the 334 for 332 if their was problems with reception. Personally, I would go with the 332. The GPS puck is small and can be put out of the way someplace on a boat, and you know you are going to get good reception.

[Cliff Wagenbach]

I have the older Lowrance 3200 and mounted the antenna puck on my dash behind the windshield and have had no problem with reception. I did have problems when the puck was mounted on the gunnel of my boat and I had to use the extension cable from the antenna to the 3200. Bad Connection problems kept popping up at the antenna-to-extension cable plug-in!

Cliff

[Corey Bechtold]

I asked this question to the guys at the Lowrance booth in the Sport Show. He said he hasn't heard of any problems with it and he uses his for Ice fishing, in his truck and has used the 334c in his boat. I hope that the 334c works good because I picked up one yesterday. If there are any concerns or problems they would be better answered by the nice folks at Lowrance.

Feel free to call them if you have any concerns.

Good luck,

Corey Bechtold