Greetings,
Steven McCollough here attempting some citizen science and mapping our bay in Lake Michigan.
I am in the beginning phases of mapping and have just registered Reefmaster for both structure and mosaic packages.
I am hoping the regulars on this forum can help me get started. My mapping platform is a custom canoe with outrigger designed for stability and electric battery storage. I have set up and successfully launched with about four hours of data to import and use for experimental purposes. Using the Lowrance Hook Reveal with the possibility to load Navionics I created a few tracks to work with. I am going to be using a medium grade gaming computer with seemingly adequate power.
Going forward I need to accomplish data acquisition this summer for work off season on creating maps. My current goals are;
Learn from the forum, the user guide, and specific pointers provided here.
Create a mapping plan for my first project. (spacing, settings, best practices, etc..}
Spend the the rest of the summer acquiring data.
Spend the winter on the computer end of mapping.
As this attached image shows, I have successfully imported a polygon and set it as the perimeter shoreline. Later I need to adjust the one point in this perimeter that is actually a point out in lake Michigan as I am actually mapping a bay not a lake. I created a mapping project with it's own boundary. I then imported the test tracks and started playing with the software controls.
A specific challenge currently is why the tracks go from narrow to wide in the results. I must not understand how the selection of scan type on the Lowrance affects the recording of a track. Also I need to standardize my settings so the data stays consistent over time. I need to learn which need to be set now and not changed if this is important. I need to understand how dense a survey I can afford to do in terms of spacing the tracks and the trade offs in details.
Any specific advice going forward would be appreciated. I know reading the right information in the right order really helps and so I am looking for suggestions. I find the help to be well done but hard to prioritize what to learn first.
Thank-you
steb