2005 Four Winns 230 Horizon
Our Ridesteady is installed in a Four Winns 230 Horizon, with a Volvo 5.7 duoprop. While not a true water sports boat, it serves as a general purpose family boat used for skiing, wakeboarding, tubing, and general cruising.
The boat is fairly heavy and at wakeboard speeds is barely on plane and will tend to lose speed and required constant throttle adjustment to keep from going either too slow or too fast. The driver really had to be paying close attention. The Ridesteady eliminates that concern and allows the driver to concentrate on driving the boat. It maintains speed while turning and even while trimming to 'fine tune' the wake. Now my wife and rest of the family can all do a very good job giving quality rides.
The unit is easy to program for different speeds and rides. If you can operate any electronic device, you'll understand how to work the display almost intuitively. We have programmed in a generic "slalom" at 30 mph, a 'wakeboard' at 21 mph, and a 'cruise' at 26 mph. All work great and a simple turn of the knob allows for the speeds to be fine tuned for each rider. One of our favorite ways to end the day is a slow sunset cruise, so I even programmed in a 'sunset' 6 mph setting. Want complete manual control; a simple push of the power button and you're back to a standard throttle setup.
We do most of our boating on Table Rock Lake which is quite large and we will sometimes run 25 miles or more to a destination. I also use the RPM setting when cruising longer distances to make sure I hold the boat at its most efficient RPM setting.
The installation process went smoothly. If you are any kind of a do it yourselfer, you should be able to follow the process. I did the install complete with air and water temp sensors, routed and secured all cables, wires, etc and had it buttoned up in approximately 6 hours. Everything worked right out of the box.
The customer support I did need was quick and top notch. I had one question regarding changing some response parameters in a program. I sent the company an email on a Sunday afternoon figuring I'd hear back on Monday or sometime the following week. I actually got a response to my question that same afternoon.
I am very happy with my purchase and would recommend them to anyone.
