Just wondering if anyone is using the new Garmin GSD 26 Chirp Sounder module and matching Chirp transducer??

I am currently running a Garmin 5012 with the older GSD 22 sounder module with the a p66 600w trannie and would be interested to hear any opinions on persons using the new 26 setup?? Good, bad or indifferent.

I am looking to buy a Garmin 750s wondering if any of you guys have one and have any feedback on them good and bad. I need to know wether the sounder is any good at finding fish/structure. Also are the preloaded maps sufficient or do I need to buy maps and has anyone experienced and problems with the touch screen.

I am keen to here your thoughts as BCF currently has them for $900

I am looking for a new stand alone Chartplotter not really interested in combos as I already have a Furuno fcv 620 I was looking at the Garmin 556 however I am open to suggestions.

Cheers

Hey guys this is my first post so go easy on me. I have recently purchased a Furuno 620 however i am wondering if you have any tips on how to tune this sounder to find fish and stucture well. I already own a Furuno LS4100 wondering whether the units will be similar to opporate.

Cheers.

Hi All,

Will be installing a new furuno sounder that will be going next to my HDS combo, so i am wondering what you think would be the best option for the new tranny location?

1) Side by side with the Lowrance tranny(50/200) on the starboard side.

2) Remove the Lowrance tranny and fit the new tranny(P66) in its location.

3) Fit the new tranny on the Port side

Any help much appreciated.

Cheers.

Can anyone tell me how to load co ordinates into this unit, as in , I have been given some gps co ords and want to go to that spot.

Tried using the instructions which are as clear as mud, and nearly threw it over board last time I tried to do it at sea. Guess thats why I dont buy stuff from Ikea.

Also tried the search function with no results. Pretty sure it would be straight forward when told by someone who has worked it out.

Or I could just smash it :(

 Hi all Imm a newbie

Have just bought a chivers thunderbird with 3l mercruiser

I need a sounder for it, whats a good one?

Went out yesterday and got to a reefy point off Wallaroo in SA - switched the sounder and structure scan on, had a bit of a look around to see if I could find a decent ledge when I came across this object. Sorry about the dirty screen and sun glare. Thought I looked promising and definitely man made due to it being so square.

Was just thinking about anchoring on it when .........
You wont believe what happened next>>>>>>>

Hi,

Created a new thread to get some help.  Purchased the Raymarine Dragonfly earlier in the week and installed it today.  Thought the connection to power would be pretty simple but no power to the unit yet.  Am I missing something?

There was a cable leading from my battery to the other sounder I had on the boat before.  This had positive, negative and I assume the earth?  I hooked these up on the Dragonfly and can't seem to get power to the unit.  There is definitely juice in the cable from the battery, as it has sparked when touching the boat as I was threading it through to the bow.

Feeling pretty stupid at the moment.

Any advice?

Hi,

Went out with my brother last night just in the sound. The weather was pretty average for our tinny so we tried to find some fish in relatively sheltered areas and have a crack. I was wondering if anyone can advise what they think I am looking at on the screenshots below. I am pretty sure what's going on (have left a hint on screen shot 1), but would appreciate others interpretations. We had three lines out in the bottom two shots but the lines were not below us. We were moving slowly in the first but at anchor in the second two. All three shots are at different locations, although the last two are pretty close to each other.

Screen shot 1 - split screen day mode on gen 2 HDS7 everything auto

Screen Shot 2

Screen Shot 3 - night mode full screen sounder

Any advice / opinion appreciated.

Cheers,

Jarrid

 I have recently purchased a lowrance elite 5 , went out. With it today to have a look and what it was going to show on the sounder, i was just out around the tyre wrec, to have a look around, a few things came up and was just wondering what they would mean.

any ideas would be great full :)

Hi everyone

I am looking to get a new Fish Finder. It got me thinking, if most of your sounding/fishing is for demersals and other bottom fish, are you best getting a screen like a Furuno 587 (tall screen, relatively narrow) or a wider unit like the GP1870F which is essentially a very wide but short screen.

Does the image on the wide screen show more distance of bottom than the narrow, or is it the same distance but just stretched over the wider screen?

I'm really interested to hear your comments.

Cheers

Brad

OK, I realise this may be a stupid question but anyhow....

I bought my boat form a bloke who had two sonar units installed, a Furuno 585 and a Lowrance LXC 113c (HD).

He informed me that the Furuno had a 600W transducer and the Lowrance a 1kW transducer.

Question is - how does one confirm the power rating on a transducer?

Thanks to any elighteners!

Hi all,

Continuing research into combo options to upgrade on my Quintrex bayhunter 475.  At the moment have an old Lowrance X48 greyscale and use my phone with the navionics app for navigation, which is functional but a bit of a pain.  After a lot of reading and price research, I'm looking at either the Raymarine Dragonfly Sonar with Navionics gold for $849 or the Lowrance Elite 5 for around $739 with gold card included as well.

Asking whether the extra cash for the Dragonfly is worth it or the cheaper Lowrance is a better deal? 

I'm inexperienced in using these and will have to learn pretty fast. Which would be easier to learn on/use?

I'm not great with electronics. Is it easy to install or should I get someone to do it for me?

As always, looking forward to feedback and advice. I have read through the recent posts using the search function but now interested in opinions of others who have had experience with these units.

Thanks 

Hi all

My magellan meridian has died and I need to get get another GPS and was looking at up grading to a 5" chart plotter. Prefer a stand alone unit and need NMEA 0183 so I can connect to my DCS VHF & furuno 620.

Went to the boat show (sydney) and got totally confussed. Really liked the Raymarine Dragonfly but it doesnt have any outputs for either 0183 or 2000.

So that leaves me with the following:

1. Lowrance Elite-5m Colour GPS Chartplotter Includes Navionics XL9 Gold Australia-Wide Chart $678 (Bias)

2. GME GPLOT Chartplotter with Internal GPS antenna & Free CMAP MAX Australia Wide $699 (whitworths) or

3. Garmin GPSMAP 556 Colour Chartplotter has BlueChart preloaded with ALL Australia & New Zealand coastal waters $699

Has anyone got one of these? likes/dislikes and would you buy the same again. Or is there something else on the market I should be looking at in this price range?

thanks
Bob

hi guys has anyone have this model unit,

thinking of replacing my older one.i mainly use the sounder function

cheers

 Hi guys recently purchased 587 just wondering if the furuno community could help me with some settings to use the unit to its full potential.

 Went out into Cockburn sound today in search of the lochness snapper but couldn't find any took these pics off my sounder fish? Cheers Daniel 

Hey guys looking to see if anyone has a FCV 620 that I could test connect my unit to your power supply to eliminate a power supply issue...

Unit was working fine when pulled out of boat however now wont fire up when connected to a power source. Not sure if it is a unit issue or Power supply/ lead issue.

Any help would be greatly appreciated to narrow down the fault.

Regards!
Mark
0438 618 494

 I have a 680 patriot and i am having alot of trouble getting my 1 kw airmar transom mount transducer to read clear or even

the depth over 15 km ph wich is really bad. As i have trimtabs i can not get it any further away from the motor and i have tried moving

it up and down with no luck . any suggestions on the best locations ???

Has anyone got a spare GPS satellite receiver to suit Lowrance 7200C?
Mine died in the rains

I'm in the process of setting up a FCV-295 with dual 20 degree tilt SS264 Airmar thru hull transducers.  These Airmar transducers come in 0, 12 and 20 tilt to suit the deadrise of your hull.

My question is this...how much difference does being close to the tilt angle matter?  For example, if you had a 7 degree deadrise, the Airmar recommendation says get the 0 degree tilt transducer...that 7 degrees off pointing straight down.  Why wouldn't the 12 dgree tilt be better, it's only 5 degrees off.  I don't really know how the ping works....I know it goes down in a cone, but does it come back that way and the sounder sorts out where the bottom is.

One of the reasons I ask is that I currently have a Lowrance colour sounder with a standard 600w transom mount transducer.  It works beautifully, even at over 30 knots, but I just want to be able to go deeper...hence the FCV-295 and new transducers.

Here's the thing though...the transducer is mounted on the same angle as the deadrise....it's at least 15 degrees off pointing straight down.  Why does it still work so well?  The depth it shows is correct (based on what other boats say), and structure that is mean't to be there is...so it's not like its showing the bottom way off to one side.

It's almost as though being on the 15 degree angle doesn't matter.  If so, why does Airmat bother with having the tilted elements?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 G’day all

I would really appreciate some recommendations on some of my queries below.

The new boat I am looking at includes a LOWRANCE HDS 7 combo unit with a 600W transducer. I am also looking at adding another sounder (with a 1kw transducer) and chartplotter (for redundancy) or combo unit. Currently I’m leaning towards the FURUNO 587 (I’m not sure of what transducer yet, preferably mounted in hull) and I am unsure of what chartplotter. If I went for another combo unit I was looking at the LOWRANCE HDS 8 combo unit.

Any recommendations or opinions would be appreciated.

Cheers

Received a PM from Petermac as follows.

"Vinnie tried to explain ping to me but am still a bit confused what it is could you explain it to me and the other fish wrecked members I mean what does it really do sorry but I realy need things to be explained in basic thanks mate"

A Ping is basicaly a pulse or sound wave sent by your transducer downwards through the water, this pulse then hits and bounces back off any objects such as fish or the bottom (see pic).  The return pulse (echo) is then read by the transducer and displayed on the screen.  (hence the term Echo Sounder).

Your sounder knows when each pulse/ping was sent and how fast it travels through the water. 

It measures the time taken to travel down, bounce off an object and return.  From this can ascertain the distance/depth of the object from the transducer. 

It also reads the strength of the return and uses both the time taken and strength of the returning signal to work out what to display (usually a colour representing the strength of the return signal) on the sounder screen and how deep to display it

Ping speed is basically setting how many pulses per second your unit is sending out.  A higher pings speed is generally required to get a higher resolution picture (ie more information returning). 

Bear in mind you don't want to just crank up your ping sped to max and think this will give you a better picture as too high can also "confuse" the sounder with too much info to process and cause other problems. 

Ping speed of around half to 3/4 is pretty much around the mark you want to be (if settings are 1-20 then somewhere between 10-15).

Hope that helps Peter

 G'day guys & girls,

Recently got a second hand boat with a JRC 500f Plot, colour sounder & plotter combo in it. Unfortunately the previous owner can't find the instruction manual for it, so I'm winging it ATM. I've worked out how to plot GPS co ords. But would like to have a bit of a read up on it so I'm not standing in front of it for hours instead of fishing. 

I know it's a bit of a long shot but if anyone on here has the same unit I would love to get hold of the manual for a couple of weeks just to get my head around it.

I've been googling them but can't seem to find any manuals online. Another option could be JRC dealers in Perth but I don't who they are. Any ideas??

Cheers

Chris

  i went for a squid today in the sound, weather was perfect after lunch so we decided to go out for a fish with fresh bait, that didnt work out for us as my hand held garmin etrex gps would not fire up, with batteries or with charger, i have a few spots marked on it. now i am buggered as i have not written them down anywhere. does any one know where i can take it to get it checked out as i am stuffed now with out them. we ended up with 7 squid an a cutly on the plus side.

                                                                                                     cheers

                                                                                                      Darryl

I know there's lots of marketing bull on them, but I am hoping on real life experience for Perth users.  If you have used both, would you bother with the Plaitnum?  They are close in price, but the Platinum is not Australia wide.  

Not that I see myself towing the boat to the otherside of the island. 

A quick play at Boats bits did not help me decide.  The Platinum seemsed to have 3d shading which made the units slow and cumbersome??

Hi guys, just got my first boat (pics to come this weekend) It has a navman chartplotter 5600 already but no sounder. Hoping you guys can point me in the right direction. Do I get just a fish finder or a combo unit? I have budget of around a $1000.  Is the Navman 5600 any good???

Hi Guys thought I would post this up to see if anyone has any ideas before I go and throw this sounder at the bcf guys that sold it to me.



I have the lowrance elite 5 combo it's the best I could afford and seems to have the features I need for inshore work. The problem I'm having is randomly il lose the depth on the sounder function, it just reads 0.5 mtrs, I can slow to a stop but it will not reset. Turning the unit on and off and disconnecting from the battery will not help either, the only way to jolt it back to life so to speak is to change the settings from 200 kHz to 83khz, then turn it off then on. This then shows the true depth then I change the settings back to 200 and I'm away. Very strange!



When it's doing this and I change it from auto to say 30m bottom I can see the bottom on the scale visually but it still reads the 0.5 and I can't see detail like fish etc just black between top and bottom on screen.



Any ideas or does it sound stuffed? I've only used it about 5 times since I bought it new so still well under warranty

 Hi,

Just thought I would post some information on a additional bit of safety gear I have been using.

Its the Spot find me device, one of the reasons I purchased it was when I go out in the boat locally or up north I let the wife know where I am off to for the day.These locations may not mean a lot to her, so with the spot device I can set it so it logs a trail and also send a "ok" message, this message goes to a preset number of emails and phone numbers, the message contains a link to a google earth image that show WGS84 coordinates. I have only bothered with the email message at this stage and it works a treat.

For the cost it makes sense to me to have one, When used with all your other safety gear and logging on and off sea rescue.

Its small enough to have on you all the time if you want to, water proof and has the emergency "COME GET ME NOW" message.

See below link, I have the Spot GPS messanger.

http://www.findmespot.net.au/