I had the same problem and still have it. I've seen this same problem on others screen shots in various SI forums dealing with the Humminbird Brand. BBC is an example of one of the other forums where I've seen these problem's with other people's screen shots.
I took my SI transducer off the back of my boat and duct taped it to a long pole and played around with it . You really need two people to do this so you can watch the screen while moving the pole around. I don't think I did any thing other than waste my time doing this. As I could not come to any real conclusion other than the SI transducer was messing up.
I'm wondering if the left si transducer element is skewed inside the unit and shooting up too high and the lines are the sound waves reflecting off the surface of the water a few feet away from the transducer.
Greg. It's a real pain to go though this procedure and many may not really do this. It took me a long time before I finally got around to doing this testing. And I tested my unit with the boat drifting and that didn't clear it up.
My warranty has expired as I bought my unit was back when the 898's first came out. I think it was around 2010 but can't really remember right now without looking up my manual and receipt.
Like I've said in other places its more of a nuisance than a major problem for me. If it was an easy fix I'd fix it. But it's not worth spending another $200+ dollars far.
Perhaps it would be best to send the Transducer in to Humminbird before your warranty runs out and or have Humminbird send you a new transducer to test to see if that fixes the problem. You can also send them the old transducer back to see if they can fix it. It's probably something that not fixable and was a factor defect from the assembly line. Unless you have a real obstruction that's causing a reflection of the sound waves right near the boat.
I think I got lines on either side of my unit when I put the transducer on the pole on each side of the boat. Which is why I came to the conclusion that the sound waves were being beamed toward the surface and hitting the water's surface or the bottom of my boat.
I have my transducer mounted at the very back of a aluminum john boat type bass boat. Fisher Marine Water Strider III. There is room between my 35 HP Johnson Out board motor and the back of my boat for the sonar beam to go though without hitting the motor or the boat. The SI beam is suppose to be a very thing sound wave beam that goes from the bottom to near the surface of the water out to 260 ft on either side of the transducer. If the noise is just a few millimeters to the left of the center line on the screen that tells me that what ever it is it's very close to the transducer. So it's got to be the bottom of my aluminum boat or the surface of the water.
Does your left side of the screen always appear darker than the right side when over a flat? A steep bank will show the deeper water as darker than the shallower side so you must be over a big flat to do this test right. If the bottom is flat out to 400 ft on either side of your boat and the bottom type is consistence then both sides of the screen should be about the same brightness. Remember that harder bottoms reflect more of the sound waves back to the transducer vs a soft bottom type.
How do you remove the stat overlay on the left side of the screen IE Time,lat,long,etc. Using the view screen of Si on the right side and DI on the left . Its great to have it up there but I would like to take it off to see whats beneath it. thank you
