I'm back with a 1994 Islander 221V!

Boats looking great!! Congrats (late) on the splash!!! I really like that faux teak, have it in my boat too but yes it shrinks.

As for the ATP mount, I like the easy original idea best.

Thanks
I went ahead with the easy route, mounted the atp brain box to the transom next to the starboard battery.

I also like it because I can pull the battery cover off and see the status lights, that should help me troubleshoot if it comes to it.

Trim tabs are fully installed and working, next step will be a lake trial and programming.

Over the weekend started organizing and cleaning the boat, getting ready for the next outing.
The alpine cd deck that this thing came with started powering off on me.
then amazon suggested the exact deck I have been trying to find.

Nearly a direct swap for this one and bundled with a remote control.
Most important thing: Bluetooth connectivity!
No CD player, but that's fine.
That arrived nice and early on Sunday morning, so I proceeded to get ready for the swap.

I was delighted to see that the plug was the same as the current unit, and the pinout is identical!
Swapped it in and connected to my phone, started with the basic setup.
The sound quality difference amazed me.
it also controls the amp/sub better with less distortion.
Overall, just a better sounding stereo with a better interface.

This is what I got
Alpine UTE 73BT

Afterwards I started doing some wire cleanup, rats nest in the starboard gunnel, hiding an Alpine speaker driver module thing.
Probably an amp, I didn't look at it too hard other than cleaning up the wiring and installing some corrugated wire protection and some new zip ties to make it pretty.

Picture from last year, tube and the little rope with the spacer to keep the rope out of the water.




Pretty decent setup, the islander pulled it great as long as I knew where the trim was.
even overloaded it did great.

Main complaint from the kids, it's hard to get on to.
the best way seemed to be from the swim platform.

I'm keeping an eye open for something a little easier to use but it worked good enough.

I had no problems making it interesting, driving side to side so they hit the wake and sometimes go flying.

Once I was on it, people seemed to really want to torment me on it?!
I played a little nicer afterwards, taking it as a hint.

I finally had a chance to try out the new trim tabs this last weekend.
Night and day difference, and it's nice having functioning trim sensors again.

For the most part i never needed to adjust the engine trim, the boat just went!

The auto trim pro feature is neat once i had it programmed.
The more i let it run, the better it got.
I also liked how when under way, it sensed chop and deployed to smooth it out, you can watch it work by the status lights on the controller.
Pretty neat

A few times i had to take over, like when they deployed at weird times and did weird things. Or when they wouldn't deploy when i wanted them to.
It got better as the auto feature learned, so I probably just need more time with it in auto.

Setup was frustrating,
First google won't resolve the bennett website for some reason, so i got different versions at first.
Later i used duck duck go and it found the bennett site right away.
Two versions of the instructions depending when the controller was made.

On the water doing the setup, i saw one step where before I swear there was two steps.
Programming never completed so i found it on youtube.
I kept missing step one where you set the stationary position, so that got frustrating until i slowed down and watched the video from the start... lol

Then finally all steps completed, and the blue lights turned off indicating Programming has been completed.

Then Programming the fav buttons so I could start messing with the auto feature.

I like having the control, and the auto feature.
Even with the tabs retracted the boat planes faster.

Running the tube was also much smoother, never needing to use engine trim.

I feel like some of the auto weirdness would be resolved if the controller had speed data, but it still does a great job once it started figuring the boat out.