Author Topic: New to Humminbird 798CI SI, a few questions  (Read 10810 times)

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Offline khewitt73

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New to Humminbird 798CI SI, a few questions
« on: September 04, 2010, 08:52:36 PM »
Hello everyone,
I recently upgraded from an older model Lowrance to the Humminbird 798ci si. I installed it about 2 weeks ago, I have been on the water fishing with it at 4 different lakes over this time frame. Some things that I have noticed and have not found answers to yet are as follows:

1. It seem that the SI loses the bottom at around the 40 foot range. It shows the bottom fairly white up to about that depth. After that depth it gets real dark and almost unseeable. Switchfire reads good at depths up to 140plus feet so far.  I understand that the transducer could be miss aligned. Any suggestions or comments?

2. I noticed that the SI images are not even close to anything I have seen on here as far as clarity. I'm attaching a few pictures that I took while on a lake that I know pretty well. Is this the quality that I should expect from this unit? Or is there something wrong with settings? Really could use some help on this.  I do understand what some of the pictures are, mostly because I went over stuff that I know. So I could tell what it was doing. But I’m thinking that it should be clearer. Ok, here we go….Pictures..ila_renderedS00011-- is what is happening at the 40ft range. Does that in all SI ranges, ila_renderedS00022—Now these are scattered logs on the bottom, only 5ft depth, I could see logs by eye. DI shows them also, ila_renderedS00024—yeah I don’t know what this is, but it is in all views. I know there are stonewalls under water in the area. Maybe it is one, ila_renderedila_renderedS00025,S00026—are a few rocks I went over. The whole lake is rocky. But I didn’t know these were on the drop off like that, ila_renderedila_renderedS00028,S00029—this is basically the same rock pile in both pictures. The pic at 38.2 is just before I lost the bottom again on the SI.   Any thoughts and/or comments, suggestions on settings and/or adjustments?

3. Has to do with recording and SD cards. I’m having an issues with being able to save recording file to the SD card (PNY Optima SD 2gb) Save error.. Also when I try to export gps data to it, it says save error. But all gps data is there when put in computer. I tried it with a PNY Optima SDHC 4gb, and it would save record files and gps data fine. What is the best card to use? Home computer can’t read SD(HC) cards. But that’s ok.

Other then these minor issues, I think the unit will be great. I guess with a little more practice and hopefully some great input from everyone here, I’ll be getting the images that I excepted from Humminbird SI. Hopefully it is just a learning curve I need to make it around.
Thanks in advance for your help.  Kevin
SORRY ABOUT THE PICTURES, SEEMS I'M HAVING A PROBLEM POSTING THEM, YOU CAN EMAIL ME AND I'LL SEND THEM IF I DONT GET IT STRAIGHTENED OUT..
« Last Edit: September 04, 2010, 09:11:24 PM by khewitt73 »


Offline Humminbird_Greg

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Re: New to Humminbird 798CI SI, a few questions
« Reply #1 on: September 10, 2010, 11:08:29 AM »
khewitt73,
If the screen snapshot in 39 feet of water was with the factory default settings I would guess that either something is blocking some of the Si sonar signal (which I only saw a little evidence of on the left side in some of the other snapshots) or something is wrong with either the transducer or unit.

How far out to the sides will the unit show when in shallow water?  The image in 5.9 feet of water only showed out to 50 feet each side. 

Best way to test to see where the problem is would be to test your unit on someone else’s boat that has a Humminbird Si unit and/or test their unit on your boat.  Any Humminbird Si model will work but just be sure to connect only the power and transducer (not the GPS Receiver).

Greg Walters at Humminbird
gwalters@johnsonoutdoors.com

Offline khewitt73

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Re: New to Humminbird 798CI SI, a few questions
« Reply #2 on: September 15, 2010, 06:17:03 PM »
Hi thanks for the reply,

I believe that the 39 foot snapshot had the sensitivity up just a little bit from factory settings. Maybe around 15 or so. The motor is on the left side of the transducer, But it was trimmed up enough as to not block the signal. It will block it if it is all the way down. The 15.3 depth snapshots does show some black on the left side, But I was very close to a rocky ledge, and figure that was the shoreline. It seemed to read father out in the swallow water, but i had it set to a short range so I could try to Identify what it was actually reading.
Is there anything in the other Si snapshots and/or Di that look off, or is that what i should expect?
On the 5.0 depth shot, should i get a better quality picture that what i had? Thinking that if it was set to a longer range that I would not have seen those logs..
I have since done a factory reset on the settings, and nothing really seemed to change as far as reading the Si in the deeper water.
I dont have the option to try on another boat, I'm the only one i know of that has one.
Again any input is of great help.
Thanks

Offline Humminbird_Greg

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Re: New to Humminbird 798CI SI, a few questions
« Reply #3 on: September 18, 2010, 11:30:13 AM »
khewitt,
If there is nothing physically on the boat blocking some of the left Si signal than it may be from turbulent water flowing off the left side.  One thing to check though is the rotational angle (when viewing the transducer from behind the boat) of the transducer.  In several of the images you posted the left side is brighter than the right.  Unless you were following a left to right slope in all of these they should have been more equal in brightness.  If you have a small/light boat you can try moving more gear and people to one side of the boat and than the other to see if it changes anything or not.  Remember that it is the level of the transducer while the boat is underway that counts and not what it looks like or measures on the trailer.

As far as loosing the bottom when over 40 feet: if you cannot test it on someone else’s boat than you will have to contact Humminbird’s Customer Resource folks at 1-800-633-1468 and see about sending your unit and transducer in to be tested.  You might want to see if they can test than together on a boat in over 40 feet of water so that they will have the same set up as you do.

Greg Walters at Humminbird
gwalters@johnsonoutdoors.com


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