eddallen

Yea, great machine. Do you have TS transducer selected in the sonar installation menu?

Oh, well then maybe you have a pic for us to view.

DownImaging should be set to 800 kHz. Slow down the ping speed some. Turn the FishID off. Turn the Surface Clarity filter to LOW. Is this an Elite CHIRP, TI or HDI?

Not by far the largest screen out there, Simrad has 24" MFD's. This wasn't meant for the little Bass boats under 30 feet. I have room for the screen, but not for a soda fountain and popcorn machine.

Which 'color palette is it set on?

These are available at Gemeco now, in in a few configurations. 7-pin, 10-pin and also some kits that include the plug. Around $50 for the splice.

No solder needed. Specifically designed 'water tight' splice connector I get from AU. I'll grab a pic and details when I get to my shop later. WARNING!!! They are pricey....but, if you are dealing with a high dollar XDCR, it is worth it. Most OEM ducers are far cheaper to replace than to fix.

The only part of this that is correct is the reference to the wires being shielded. I have spliced many without incident. The length is absolutely absurd....makes no difference what length the cable is.

It can be spliced.

Guys it all really depends on the boat and the installation. Here is a StarCraft 206 with the OEM 83/200 and SS3D transducers and you can see it reads bottom very well at 30+ mph, and notice that the larger SS3D transducer creates no water spout. The boat topped out at 52 mph, still reading bottom from the 83/200 although the SS3D ducer wasn't useful.

Serious Pros and Guides do it like 'Kicker' did.

Yes, that works. It's a sweet deal!

Simplest way to accomplish what you want.....each of your get an account, swap sonar logs (cards) and you have it. Secondly...if you get the FREE IG account you can't keep your logs private. Only way to keep them private is to buy the premium account. Edd

Also realize the serial# on the 'outside' of the unit is different than the serial# inside the unit. Use the # from the inside.

Thanks Wayne

Roger can you post a pic of a three-dimensional CHIRP screen shot? And one question for WayneP; When you effectively shorten or split the band by using, say, the middle 10, aren't you missing something you would normally see? Or does the firmware just apply filters to the lower and upper 10? I have not yet seen this. Would like to. That's pretty kewl but I wonder IF something is missing from say 140 kHz? I'm just curious.

Some of this is miss-stated. CHIRP is two dimensional sonar but, CHIRP is quite different than 'traditional' sonar. CHIRP doesn't use a 'range of multiple bandwidths', but every frequency on a particular frequency band usually referred to as Low, Medium and High bands. So with traditional sonar the transducer fires a single frequency ping out, where with CHIRP, the transducer sends out a BURST of frequencies from the complete bandwidth. It is all of these frequencies at one time that produces the outstanding target separation. With CHIRP you have the capability to select any custom single frequency within the band to use also.

Your questions can't be answered that simply. There is a great different between traditional sonar and CHIRP sonar, plenty of which you can see on the screen. Speed? No matter HOW it is introduced into water, sound travels at about 4908 ft per second through about 68* water. You will NOT see any difference here as you may see in the GPS screen dependent on module. Your ability to read the bottom at speed is more dependent on the power of the transducer and its mounting position and angle.

I have been using the Rain-X product for years with great success. Word of caution on cleaning MFD screens....best to do this when the screen is cool...with any product.

Had it...used it...loved it! Yes it will help you stay on spot, but that said, It's not a Precision-9. I also have the Lowrance OutboardPilot auto-steering unit. I switched from Point-1ap to the Precision-9 to help with the drifting of the AP while at speed. I have not been in the water since making this change so I have no update yet.

All of us who do this for a living will tell you there are too many things that can go wrong. In 1988 marine electronics was a second thought to boat builders on the recreational/semi-pro spectrum. The newer boats of the 2000 vintage and on started actually considering such things and placed round piping, flexible/rigid, as wire runs in the hulls. But prior to that era most builders simply glassed in a flat piece from the cap gunnel to the main hull. This makes it very hard for a single person to pull wire through. Another possible cause (we see this way too much) is zip-ties. These have there place but most riggers of new boats did not take into consideration where these ties would lie on the finished hull. Do a diligent search for these ties. But, what is far worse than the ties is electrical tape. The plug/connectors on cables also make things difficult. They hang up on earlier production boats with the flat glassed in bars and you can damage the cable without even knowing. Your rigging rope that is already in place is sweet only IF it was always used to pull new wire in. Otherwise, your rope may not be cleanly. It is fairly easy to pull the rope but when you add a 1" diameter connector....well you get the picture. Some things that may help: Fiberglass pulling rods from Harbor Freight both in 1' and 3' sections. If you have an old rod-sock you can feed the connectors into the sleeve and tape and wire tie the sock to an area behind the connectors. This will help get through some snags especially if you use the sock in conjunction with the fiberglass rods. Sometimes when you get a snag at the same point on every pull, you can have a friend keep steady but soft pressure from the opposite end to help keep your wire straight. Good luck, with each one of these you do you will get better.

Just an FYI 'SolarMax' pertains only to the new touch screens.

Great tips for those starting out and some seasoned vets. You also point out some very real problems for us out west (CA) where our lakes are rarely full or at capacity, and in fact, seem to change elevation on a daily basis. This is why I choose to upload logs to Insight Genesis, where I can create the offset for lake elevation. Currently this is the only drawback to the 'on-the-spot' or 'live' recording programs. Maybe in the future upgrades this will become available.

So I don't Bass fish and I take a slightly different approach. I mark ALL waypoints by placing the cursor directly on what I need to mark. As Wayne P said, after marking the waypoint it is forever a set of coordinates, never to change. It really doesn't matter to me if there is 6 units on the boat, they will all display the same position for any waypoint. You can test this at home simply by placing the cursor over the same waypoint on all units and its LAT/LON will be spot on. Of course, if you want extreme accuracy make sure you are zoomed IN tight. Notice on Wayne P's pic that the EPE (estimated position error) is 19.7 feet. That's almost the length of a Bass boat. I think, from what the OP stated, that he needs to realize the difference between a 2D sonar cone and a DownImaging cone (footprint). Very easy to see and mark something on DownImaging without that item ever getting close to the 2D cone, especially in skinny water. Really good info in this thread!

You do have some noise...how about a pic of the XDCR mounting to help us sort this out.