®
1 L OWRAN CE E L
mysteries of
Story & photos
BY KEN SAURET
PART 1
I
n this issue of
Westernbass’s
online magazine,
I would like to ad- dress some of the com-
monly asked questions
along with some inter-
esting questions that
some of you may have
wondered about, but
have yet to delve into.
There won’t be a lot
of pictures or short cuts to
understanding
your electronics. Time spent mastering these small
“computers” on your boat will separate you from over
half of your competition.
To get the most out of your electronics and to
make you a better fisherman is the goal for all my
readers to get from my writing about Lowrance
Electronics.
I can’t stress enough the value that these little
grey boxes on your boat have to your success when
you spend the time to learn how to maximize their
use. These things can save you time on the water
finding fish and money on gasoline so you’re not just
running around looking for fish.
Example, the shoreline points where everyone
else has been looking gets pounded over and over, so
learning your electronics will give you the confidence
to search for new offshore spots. As you have all
heard before, CONFIDENCE is the best thing to have in
your boat and knowing how to apply the information
that your electronics can give you, WILL give you
more CONFIDENCE!
With that being said, here are a few questions and
answers that possibly can help you.
38
QUESTION #1
I had my new
rig on the water
for the first time
yesterday. The
boat came with
an HDS 7 Gen 2 at the
console. Love the unit, but
at times I lost the depth
readings. Sometimes I
would lose the reading
when I was running and other times I would lose the reading when sitting still. I have a transducer that is mounted inside the hull, a through hull transducer.
ANSWER #1
There may be an air bubble in the epoxy under the transducer or more rarely, in the fiberglass of the bottom of the boat. An air bubble will deflect the “ping” just like when you can see the air bubbles in the water column. In this case you, would need to remount the transducer a couple inches to one side or the other and see if you have “clean” epoxy and fiberglass.
Something else to check is the transducer setting in the HDS 7. Look at the chrome tag on the transducer cable to find the model number of your transducer. Then, when you go to the SONAR SETTINGS menu, look at the bottom of that menu and find TRANSDUCER TYPE The default setting is UNKNOWN, because Lowrance doesn’t know which transducer you may be using in your application. Highlight this box, hit enter and locate your transducer model number on the list, highlight it and hit enter.