Fish Locator

ajohnston	I have a 22 foot pontoon, and i am having problems to get the fish locator to work at high speed, transducer mounted to rear of right side pontoon, works fine at slow speed, i have tried various adjustments and nothing seems to work, ANY SUGGESTIONS THANKS	2002-02-16
J.B. Cornwell	Howdy, AJohnston. Is your fish finder by any chance a Hummingbird? If so, it is behaving normally. If it is a Lowrance or an Eagle you may have the Xducer mounted where it has to try to see through air or bubbles when you are going fast. If neither of the above, please tell us what make and model finder you have. Red sky at night. . . JB	2002-02-16
djohns19	J.B.'s right as usual. If it's a H'Bird, you'll have a tougher time getting it to read. Pontoons throw out alot of "dirty" water behind the logs. Make sure your transducer is lower than the lowest point of the log.	2002-02-17
ajohnston	This is a Humingbird wide 100 would at least get it to work at 10 miles per hour	2002-02-17
Case	Captain JB, ETAL, are correct. My Humminbird only works at a fast idle. Any more speed than that, and its always 246 feet deep and there are monsters down there Always a good idea to have a depth chart, but wouldn't stake my life on one of those either ;-P. Case	2002-02-17
12Footer	12Footer's 12Footer is Humminbird Wide100-equipped. It only werks at speeds less than 5MPH. And before it gets posted, I have tried moving the ducer to all points possable, and that's the best it will do in clear freshwater. Salt, it simply wont track bottom. And this gives me another chance to thank JB for the Eagle. Now THAT is a fishfindin fool! Thanks, JB.	2002-02-17
J.B. Cornwell	I guess that's it, AJohnston. H'birds are notorious for losing bottom as soon as you come off of idle. I don't know what to do to make them work properly, and as you can see above neither do a lot of other experienced boaters. Even the entry level, $99 Eagles work better. Sorry we don't have better news. Red sky at night. . . JB	2002-02-17
BUCK N DI	JB Could you give me some ideas on which Eagle to get? Also would appreciate any other info on Eagle from personal experiences. Thanks, BUCK	2002-02-18
J.B. Cornwell	Howdy, Buck 'n' Di. I have used the baseline Eagle, the FishEasy, and got good performance with a small screen and coarse resolution. I have also used three different versions of the Eagle Ultra. Lots of neat features, bigger screen and finer resolution. Great performance. I currently have a Lowrance X65 on my Montauk and an Interphase Sea Scout scanning sonar for my Outrage. I haven't used the Interphase yet. The X65 has a nice big screen and fine resolution, plus a lot of features. You can get detailed info on the Lowrance site. You can spend $100 or $2000 on a Lowrance/Eagle sonar. You will get your money worth. Many offshore salt water anglers swear by the expensive Furuno color units. Red sky at night.. . JB	2002-02-18
rigerman	BUCK N DI, I purchased an Eagle, I believe the FishID128 about 4 years ago. Cost me less than $100. Was less expensive than a digital depth finder. I'm not a fishing person, so I use the fish finder/depth finder to give me an idea of the bottom contour. Seems to work fine from zero to 45 mph. Between 45 & 55 it's questionable. picture is a little grainy. For the price and what I use it for it works great.	2002-02-18
pursuit2150	My 2$. relocate it so that it does not see too much turbulance,or even worse,bubbles. Even the best don't like it and will give you a false or bad reading.	2002-02-18
Franki	lol, I have a Wide 100 as well, and I am having the same problem,,, If its anywhere near an outboard or Sterndrive, move it, put it to the far outside of the pontoon,, I had mine working fine and then I decided I wanted it closer to the V, since then I	2002-02-19
Chum Slick	I have a 20' SandPiper Pontoon with a 70 Johnson. I mounted my Eagle Ultra Classic on the motor mount transom and it works like a charm up to 35 mph. Don't know if will track at faster speeds mounted there; That's all I can get out of my toon. If you mount transducer to back of toons even the Eagles won't work as effeciently but better than the H'Birds. I have an Eagle mounted on my 18' Thunderbird and it will track depth up to 65 mph.	2002-02-19
ajohnston	I got disguested and sent it back to alabama with instructions to fix or refund my money since it was in under warrenty. Will keep you posted. This was the 2nd unit that i had from them.	2002-03-03
MURX	there are three fishfinders us west coasters use Furuno #1 Raymarine #2 and JRC the ray marine 365/465 units are ok but if you're going drop the money and you want something that actually works I'd look at the furuno monchrome unit http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/commerce/command/ProductDisplay?prmenbr=201&prrfnbr=1863&store_num=3&store_name=Electronics&subdept_num=143&subdept_name=Fishfinders&class_num= 144&class_name=Fishfinders&outlet=	2002-03-03
Forktail	I've had bad luck with two different Humminturds. Same problem. Eagle and Lowrence work great.	2002-03-04
mike b.	Nobody has seemed to noticed that this is normal for a wide 100 hummingbird.I had a wide 100 on my first boat and it stopped reading any speed past idle. It doent matter where its at on the transom or bottom.I now have another boat and I purchased a 200dx hummingbird(next model up).It reads to about 45 mph on my boat.The difference is the 200 comes with a high speed transducer which is visibly larger than the one on the 100.The 200 is $30-40 more than the 100 and has plug ins for temp,speed sensors.The Eagle 128 cost about the same as the 100 and comes with the high speed transducer.I called around alot and every dealer/store recommened the Hummingbird for reliability over Eagle.The stores did handle both brands and told me customers had to return Eagle all the time.If you want to spend less than $150 and have all the features you want get the 200dx Hummingbird.	2002-03-04
pchieco	I have a 300TX Humminbird and have had the same problem. These units are very sensitive to voltage fluctuations. I installed a SUREVOLT Marine Power Stabilizer and it solved the problem. They are on clearance from Humminbird if your interested. Regular price is 69.95 for 19.95. Good luck http://www.humminbird.com	2002-03-04
ajohnston	Up date to all that give me advice, received an email today stating that the small size transducer was hard to mount in a location to get it to work at high speed. They stated they had a larger sixe that works good and they was going to mail it too me so will let you know how it works. Thanks to all who replied.	2002-03-06
mike b.	AJohnson that was what I was saying.The the larger transducer is a high speed transducer and comes standard on all models above the 100.That will solve your problem.	2002-03-06
Franki	I just went to the hummingbird site as well, had a big winge about lack of function at speed.... (in a nice way..) I am hoping that I too will be send a new sender unit.. I have a 17 foot boat with a 100HP outboard.. it goes without saying that I can go alot faster just cruizing then the Wide 100 can read at... so 90% of the time I am moving, I can't read the bottom anymore.. rgds Frank	2002-03-07
Forktail	loggerhead, my Humminturds both had the larger, high-speed transducers. Humminturd told me I was mounting them wrong. But I tried mounting them every which way, etc. No luck. Even tried them on two other boats. Waste of time and money. The Eagle/Lowerance transducers are smaller and work perfectly....in the same boat on the same mount location. I will never buy another Humminturd.	2002-03-07
ajohnston	Loggerhead and Franki JB and everyone who replied. Hummingbird sent my unit back with another new transducer just like the one i had, email them again and they sent me another one XHS-6-16so now have three, unable to test it yet due to water level, lake is at winter time pool will let you know if it works in April when they close the gates. Thanks everyone	2002-03-14
Franki	Here is the response I got back from hummingbird about my problem. ################################### Dear Sir: We would recommend an in hull transducer installation. Please see attached instructions. Sincerely, Tina Conner http://www.humminbird.com/hb_MoreSupport.asp?id=147 ################################### my hull is old, its very very thick solid fiberglass, I have a suspecion that it would be even worse trying to get a reading though the hull. (this hull has no cross supports, just two huge beams running up the center of the hull and really thick F/G, so I think most of the signal would be lost just getting through the hull. fat lot of good their advice is.. I'm not make the mistake of spending 400 bucks on anything from that company. rgds Frank	2002-03-16
ebbtide176	ok, i've been on this site for several months now, and haven't whined about HB..... mainly because it hurts too much to claim that i bought HB too. so, i've got the HB WideView up front, which fogs up, and otherwise	2002-03-16
ebbtide176	oh, and this HDR200 uses the XHS-6-16 high speed xducer as stock unit. it will do crazy stuff like jump from 5 to 180 just doing fast idle.	2002-03-16
Franki	If they don't come up with a workable answer to my queries, I will be emailing them this entire thread so they can see how it will hurt their future sales and company image.. I actually thought my unit was well built, it just doesnt' work.. and I found alot of cheaper units with more features after I bought the wide100... which is always the way isn't it? I bought the hummingbird because I was under the impression that they were an old well established company.. I won't make that mistake again I think. rgds Frank	2002-03-16
RJS	I previously owned a Zercom Liquid Paper Graph. The tranducer is the same as Hummingbird. I've had similar problems at high speed. Try pointing the tranducer down a little more. This sometimes helps. The tranducers that Hummingbird uses are just not that hydrodynamically efficient. Lowrance's design seems to work much better, if you can keep the actual fishfinder unit working (I've had bad luck with Lowrance, although their service is good). I've switched to Furuno and will never go back.	2002-03-16
flatsman	Hey, I have 3 Hummers and they all have worked fine ---set it up in the right place on your boat and it will work just fine ---no depth finder can see thru air bubbles. I have one on a cobia I run offshore and it does great at 39 mph. Grass on transducer ain't good on any brand or grease on it either, [[*]null	2002-03-16

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