I set mine and it's always on. The only trouble is that you have to disable it every time you approach the shore or head into an anchorage. I don't know, is that a big deal for some people? Here's a funny story for you. We were heading up the bay towards Punta Arenas in Costa Rica but our paper charts didn't include the river mouth. I knew the river mouth had a white ball that we had to take on our port side. This information came back over the radio from a request I had made from someone already anchored in the river. I was expecting a white buoy and not a Clorox bottle and so missed the 'Buoy" and kept going up the off chart arm of the bay . I eventually realized my mistake and with the binoculars was able to pick out the bottle. I adjusted my depth sounder alarm and headed back for the bottle. The alarm was set for 10 feet and after a while it went off. I steered to starboard until it cleared then back towards the ball. After a while the alarm went off again and I steered to starboard until it cleared. This went on until I finely reached the ball, rounded it and headed up the river. I tossed out the anchor in a very fast river streaming with all manner of debris. Logs, baby carriages, tree branches and an occasional TREE. The funny thing was that we arrived on the highest tide of the year just after a huge multi day rain storm in the mountains. The next day when I woke up I had no idea where I was. The place looked entirely different. There was a large riprap side to the river that was 15 feet above me and a cow pasture to my port side. A cow pasture complete with a barbed wire fence and a broken down tractor. I had sailed right over all that crap the day before and never knew it. That was a real head scratcher.