Chestle
Well-known member
During the SD opener my son's DoubleTT Lab went missing in a tall cane field for about 15 minutes. Cane was about 6'+ in height, strong winds blowing; I doubt she could hear the whistle with all the cane rattling.. We all came out the other end, no dog. You can't go home to the grandkids without their dog. We found her though.
So I ran into a deal I couldn't refuse on an Alpha 200i with 2 collars. I took both dogs and it back to SD after Christmas. I didn't receive it in time to do a lot of online YouTube learning about it. The manual that came in the box is minimal. So, I'm certainly no expert on this thing yet. I'd rate myself barely competent.
Here's my initial thoughts. I'll preface this with saying I'm fairly techie but not all that techie. I didn't grow up with all the computer stuff; we had ONE black and white TV when I was in high school; only the rich folk had a color TV.
First, the "Pro". I always KNEW right where both dogs were, even in the huge cattail slough. Even if I couldn't see them, I could tell if they were stopped (point?) or moving. Both are trained to recall on the "beep-beep-beep" of the collar and that worked well with knowing their distance when out of sight in the 'tails. I used the vibe a few times and it vibed enough to get their attention. In all 5 days, I think I used correction maybe twice on each dog when they were chasing running birds; it worked. I tried both the clock type compass pointer and the arrowhead for showing where the dogs were. I prefer the arrowhead. These things were the things I actually used while hunting.
You can also set alerts for various things which I think will be useful once I get more familiar with the setup. I had alerts off on this trip.
It will show the dogs track on a map. To me that's a post hunt thing. I really didn't use it in the field. I forgot to start/end each hunt when leaving/returning to the truck. So at the end of the day my dogs covered a lot of distance because it tracked them while the truck was moving too. It will track the handheld too, so you can tell how far you walked; same problem for me though - off/on/off.
The Con: The handheld is pretty big/heavy; you know it's hanging on your neck when you use a lanyard. I put the extra 32GB microSD card in it and downloaded (has to be WiFi) some of the BirdsEye Direct satellite imagery. I wasn't impressed. There are a couple ways to select the area you want to d/l. I thought the easiest was to stick a waypoint pin and tell it to d/l by radius. It says it will do a 10 mile radius; that caused it to lock up. The most I could get to d/l was about 5 miles. So I'm sticking pins all around my area; PITA. There is also a $70 OnX microSD for a state; that would be much better IMO.
All the buttons are user configurable, so that's a plus. You can set it up the way it makes sense to you. However, I was wearing my leather Plainsman gloves and I found the top row of action buttions (mine are tone/vibe/continuous) to be a bit small when wearing gloves. The side buttons (selects which dog on mine) are better.
This is really kind of a small computer. The options/possibilities are many. I have a lot of YouTube watching to do before I really decide how much I like it and its features. On balance, I suspect there's a lot of gee whiz that's cool stuff that I will likely not use while hunting or even ever.
With that in mind, I sort of think if I had it to do over again I might just get a Garmin PRO 550 Plus. Everything you need for training and control and the directional info as well. Not as cool of a display and certainly far less features but it has the essentials. A negative would be that the 550 won't display multiple dogs simultaneously like the Alpha will. It requires toggling through the various dogs for positions. I did like seeing both dogs on the Alpha.
I'll probably update this as I use it more and learn more about it.
So I ran into a deal I couldn't refuse on an Alpha 200i with 2 collars. I took both dogs and it back to SD after Christmas. I didn't receive it in time to do a lot of online YouTube learning about it. The manual that came in the box is minimal. So, I'm certainly no expert on this thing yet. I'd rate myself barely competent.
Here's my initial thoughts. I'll preface this with saying I'm fairly techie but not all that techie. I didn't grow up with all the computer stuff; we had ONE black and white TV when I was in high school; only the rich folk had a color TV.
First, the "Pro". I always KNEW right where both dogs were, even in the huge cattail slough. Even if I couldn't see them, I could tell if they were stopped (point?) or moving. Both are trained to recall on the "beep-beep-beep" of the collar and that worked well with knowing their distance when out of sight in the 'tails. I used the vibe a few times and it vibed enough to get their attention. In all 5 days, I think I used correction maybe twice on each dog when they were chasing running birds; it worked. I tried both the clock type compass pointer and the arrowhead for showing where the dogs were. I prefer the arrowhead. These things were the things I actually used while hunting.
You can also set alerts for various things which I think will be useful once I get more familiar with the setup. I had alerts off on this trip.
It will show the dogs track on a map. To me that's a post hunt thing. I really didn't use it in the field. I forgot to start/end each hunt when leaving/returning to the truck. So at the end of the day my dogs covered a lot of distance because it tracked them while the truck was moving too. It will track the handheld too, so you can tell how far you walked; same problem for me though - off/on/off.
The Con: The handheld is pretty big/heavy; you know it's hanging on your neck when you use a lanyard. I put the extra 32GB microSD card in it and downloaded (has to be WiFi) some of the BirdsEye Direct satellite imagery. I wasn't impressed. There are a couple ways to select the area you want to d/l. I thought the easiest was to stick a waypoint pin and tell it to d/l by radius. It says it will do a 10 mile radius; that caused it to lock up. The most I could get to d/l was about 5 miles. So I'm sticking pins all around my area; PITA. There is also a $70 OnX microSD for a state; that would be much better IMO.
All the buttons are user configurable, so that's a plus. You can set it up the way it makes sense to you. However, I was wearing my leather Plainsman gloves and I found the top row of action buttions (mine are tone/vibe/continuous) to be a bit small when wearing gloves. The side buttons (selects which dog on mine) are better.
This is really kind of a small computer. The options/possibilities are many. I have a lot of YouTube watching to do before I really decide how much I like it and its features. On balance, I suspect there's a lot of gee whiz that's cool stuff that I will likely not use while hunting or even ever.
With that in mind, I sort of think if I had it to do over again I might just get a Garmin PRO 550 Plus. Everything you need for training and control and the directional info as well. Not as cool of a display and certainly far less features but it has the essentials. A negative would be that the 550 won't display multiple dogs simultaneously like the Alpha will. It requires toggling through the various dogs for positions. I did like seeing both dogs on the Alpha.
I'll probably update this as I use it more and learn more about it.