Topic: hello all new here and looking for guidance

[gunner52]

Hi everyone i just joined the forums a week or so ago and have been reading and researching all kinds of stuff for the last month or so on here and finally ordered a 798ci hd si unit should be here tomorrow afternoon 
Im an avid scuba diver and am mainly going to be using the unit to look for shipwrecks and to map dive site but i also volunteer with out local dive rescue team so it might come in handy for some search and recovery missions.
i have a few questions tho so hopefully somebody can answer them for me or help direct me to the answers.

whats the diffrence between side imaging and side scan and down imaging for that matter.  my take on it is that down imaging is pretty much directly below the boat for the most part and side imaging shoots out to the right and left to cover more ground but whats the deal with side scan then or is that just another name for side imaging lol sorry all the new terms are getting confusing.

next is there a way with the ethernet to connect to a laptop to use it as an external display so i will have a large display to view scans on in real time? ive been looking into getting drdepth can it do that sort of thing?

thanks in advance for any help cant wait to start scanning

[stillbear]

Here is some great information for you please read it all.   Thanks Gary
http://forums.sideimagingsoft.com/index.php?topic=2684.0
http://forums.sideimagingsoft.com/index.php?topic=715.0

[sonar2000]

Side image or side scan is about the same. A guess the difference is than in side scan a tow fish is generally used. Side image is generally a surface mounted transducer.

HB does not make a tow fish but some of the guys here have nuilt home grown tow fish using the SI transducer and PVC or other material.

One thing to consider is the target size and how it will cast the sonar shadow.

An expensive side scan fish has a small window beam as it is designed to be near the bottom when deployed
The side image beam is very wide as it is designed to cover a lot of area from the surface. Thr processor will also have to process a lot of information returns.
Towing the SI transducer works pretty well but for SAR you need to be exact so we use SI for smaller areas that are not to deep. If the area of probability is large and/or deep (below 40 feet) then we go for the more expensive mfg's.
On the SAR section of this forum are some posts on sonar usage and victim target considerations.
You might want to look thru there also.

Chuck