Perfect Pass Stargazer: A Practical Review - 6/5/2009
Let me paint a scene for you: It's 06:30AM. You woke up at 05:30AM, pressed the snooze bar a couple times, prepped the boat with gear and trailered it to the lake. You're groggy, but a stop at the gas station for coffee and some gas for the boat helps. Friends are waiting at the ramp, and you don't want to be late regardless of how late you stayed up the night before. The lake is glass. No wind, and no other boats moving on the water. The course stretches out in front of your boat, all buoys perfectly in line like the lights of a runway. All the buoys are there too— what a bonus! This is public water, but right now it may as well be the best private site on earth.
The best part is that you know your speeds and times are going to be dead on this morning. No hand timer, no stopwatches, no 6+ buoy magnets. No timing passes to mess up your glass. No settling down at the end of the pass wondering if the skier weight or wind factor had been set up correctly on your speed control. And, you didn't have to buy a brand-new boat to get this assurance. That's because your boat is equipped with Perfect Pass Stargazer, a GPS-based speed control made to work on just about any boat out there. Speed will not be a variable this morning.
The best part is that any existing Perfect Pass system can be upgraded to Stargazer with minimal effort and cost. This was great news for us since we have a 2000 Ski Nautique and don't plan on upgrading to a newer boat any time soon. My Stargazer upgrade kit arrived a couple months ago. The kit included a new master module and a GPS puck antenna, along with detailed installation instructions. Swapping out the master module and adding the GPS antenna to my dash was a piece of cake, taking all of about 20 minutes. I had already upgraded to the newer 6.5ng in-dash display a couple years ago, so that did not have to be replaced. My existing paddlewheel sensor will now only be used for lake temperature. The latest version of Stargazer does not use the paddlewheel for anything else. My 9-year-old original servo setup is fully compatible with Stargazer and is still running strong. So, installing the kit was very "plug-and-play".
When I first booted up Stargazer, I entered the engine hours and engine type, as well as my time zone, MPH/KPH and F/C temp settings. Stargazer actually has a built-in clock which immediately picked up the time from the GPS satellites, with the boat still sitting in my garage. Setup beyond that was minimal. I entered a crew weight and took the boat out for a calibration run. I didn't even need a course for baseline calibrations, instead choosing "Capture" calibration mode. This mode allows you to drive up to a set speed and then tell the system when you reach the actual speed that you're calibrating. Once you do, a baseline RPM is captured for that speed and you're done. Rinse and repeat for each speed that you want to calibrate for Slalom.
Driving Perfect Pass Stargazer felt similar to driving 6.5ng. The main difference I felt was that this version of Perfect Pass is much more aggressive with the throttle. It gets to speed quicker, settles down quicker, reacts to slow-downs quicker, etc., which is terrific. Even making a slight counter-turn for a turnaround at the end of the course elicits a satisfying blip in revs from the GT-40 motor sitting right behind me.
Perhaps the best feature of Stargazer is the single magnet timing mode. All you need is one single magnet (or just use the hand timer) on each gate of the course. That tells Perfect Pass Stargazer that you've entered the course. The system immediately begins timing the course, beeping at every single buoy as if each one had a magnet. It made me feel like was at the ski club (which has all buoy timing) although I was on public water on a course with no magnets. We actually used the hand timer with the single magnet mode, which worked perfectly. According to the Stargazer display, our times were dead on or well within tolerance on every single pass. So I'm on a public course, the Perfect Pass is beeping at every buoy, and the times are dead on. Heaven for the practical skier with an older boat on public water.
At 15-off, 30MPH the pull felt soft and easy, same as it does on our club boat which has DBW and Perfect Pass Stargazer. 32MPH felt great as well. At these speeds, all of our "testers" had no complaints. Trick mode also worked great. Set the speed, hit the throttle, and enjoy. Did I mention practice mode for slalom? This mode lets you choose .1MPH increments over or under standard tournament speeds, making "tweener" speeds super easy to set- 31MPH, 33MPH, you name it.
In conclusion, this is the best upgrade I've bought for this boat in a long time— perhaps ever. Wherever we drag this boat (and we drag it around a LOT), I know I'll have good slalom speeds and times. No wind or skier weight adjustment, single magnet (or hand timer button) timing, a built-in clock that is calibrated via GPS (a small thing that is a huge bonus), snappy servo response, practice mode with 1/10th mph increments and big smiles all around the boat.
You can order your Stargazer upgrade directly from Perfect Pass or from a dealer in your area. For more information, click here to visit Perfect Pass.com. Be sure to let the folks at Perfect Pass know that we sent you! We should have a discount code for their website that will entitle you to free shipping for the next month— I'll post the code as soon as I get it.
FTC Disclosure: this product was provided to me for free.
Comments:
jhughes, 6/8/2009: Through July 15, if you mention Fifteen Off at the time of ordering Stargazer you will be eligible for free ground shipping.east tx skier, 6/9/2009: It's nice to see someone else enjoy SG as much as I do. There seems to be so much bickering back and forth about ZO versus SG. My system has always performed extremely well on the water. The only issue I ever had was a system save issue in a much earlier version that was fixed before the boat ever got wet that season. Times have always been great and the pull has always felt good to this skier as well.
spud, 6/14/2009: I've just ordered the upgrade for my 07 196(have not recieved it as yet I'm in Australia) any thoughts on were i should mount the antenna and your thoughts on it open water skiing in a current?
jhughes, 6/15/2009: I mounted mine right to the dash, by the defroster vent for the heater. That way the wire just goes right under the dash pod and into the wiring access hole for the dash. Worked out great. Since the speed is measured as ground speed I'm not sure how it would work with a current.
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