Garmin’s Alpha 100 is full of handy features

[Garmin]

One of the more aggravating things about going to competition events is driving to the hunt to compete with your dogs and at draw-out time realizing you left your stopwatch at home. Yes, you have a drawer full of them at home and, yes, the vendors have many new ones to sell you, but you don’t really want to spend another $20 to keep track of the multiple things that occur while on a cast, when judging, or helping judge a cast.

That $20 was part of your gas budget and “Momma” is already upset that you aren’t home with her and the kids!!

If you have an Alpha 100, it does have a stopwatch on the “Dashboard,” or the drop-down page when you first turn on your handheld. It also has an alarm clock, calendar, waypoint manager and a bunch of other useful “tools,” but it is not easy to navigate through this page to find one, like the stopwatch, in the competitive heat of a cast battle.

Perhaps the handiest feature on an Alpha for folks competing in events is “putting” the stopwatch on the front of the Map page. It is something that is very useful, very simple to do, but I never hear of folks taking advantage of this useful feature.

To get a useful, convenient stopwatch on the Map page of your Alpha 100:

• Go to your “Map” page.
• On the bottom of the screen, press “Menu” (the three small lines in the middle)
• Press “Setup Map.”
• Press “Dashboard.”
• Press “Stopwatch.”

When the hunt is over, and you are back home pleasure hunting, it is easy to remove the stopwatch from your Map page. Placing the stopwatch on the front of the map while out hunting takes away some of your view, so I don’t know if you’ll want to keep it there while pleasure hunting. But it is a good way to practice timing and get to know your dog better throughout the week if you keep it there. The good news is that it takes seconds to remove it, and you can easily put it back to the front page anytime you want with a few taps on the screen.

To remove the stopwatch from the front of your Map page:

• Go to your “Map” page.
• On the bottom of the screen, press “Menu” (the three small lines in the middle)
• Press “Setup Map.”
• Press “Dashboard.”
• Press “Training.”

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