sounders?

[rjack321]

So I'm in the market for a sounder for my new boat. I'm interested in knowing what you have used that generally fits these requirements.

Small, its a 15.5ft boat with a tiny tiny console (to save deck space)
Color, daylight viewable
High Resolution screen matched with transducer for finding small targets
Ability to zoom screen to near bottom
Not too expensive, $500 US max - ~$300 would be better (got lots of other stuff for the boat to go)
Waterproof

I don't fish, so this is strictly for diving. One of several I'm considering is a Humminbird 343C.

 

[Wildcard]

Why do you need color? That is generaly used to discern the density of the target hit. Hummin bird makes bass boat sounders, they are OK and would prolly work fine for dive depths. Id think real hard about getting a low end sounder/chart plotter/gps combo. Many in your upper price range. It aint radar but you can feel your way throuogh fog at least.

 

[Wildcard]

Here! http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/t...parentType=index&indexId=cat602012&hasJS=true

For a hundred bucks more you can have color. Im a big fan of Garmin right now as they have the charts preloaded in them. Can save you thousands if you move around a lot. Very nice unit is available for only $700 at this same site.

 

[Nemrod]

What sort of boat is it? Where will you be using it for diving? Do you need the ability to use Navionics Gold (ocean, coastal) type charts or Navionics Hot Maps (lakes)? What depths do you work at?

I know that once upon a time Humminbird was a discount brand found at Walley World but in recent years they greatly upgraded their quality and capability to now being equal to other upper tier brands with some unique capabilities. For 1,000 dollars more or less you can get the Humminbird 787c sidescanner with built in Navionics data base, GPS and all that in a compact case. For lesser amounts of money, I like the simple Lowrance/Eagle units. If your trying to conserve on space, be sure and spend the money to get a dual purpose GPS/sonar unit and preferably as I mentioned one that can accept cartography cards from whatever source. Dual frequecy beams are useful in salt water.

N

 

[Pierre Siquet]

Never seen, but hummin sidescanner seems to do miracles in resolution and object identification.
see here:

http://www.thehulltruth.com/forums/...t=1&highlight=Humminbird+side&highlightmode=1

 

[boydski]

Never seen, but hummin sidescanner seems to do miracles in resolution and object identification.

I just installed a Hummingbird 997 in my new dive boat, and the side scan sonar is awesome!

We took the boat out this weekend and were easily able to find several new wrecks that were rumored to exist, but the locations were "fuzzy". What I really like about the unit is that you can place the cursor on an object in side-scan mode, hit mark, and the unit calculates the position of the object for you (including depth) and sets a way point.

The smaller 797 would work well on a smaller boat, but is close to $1000 in cost, so is definitely more than richard wants to spend. One of my buddies is very interested in putting the Hummingbird Matrix 47 3D on his RIB. The technology looks pretty interesting and is about half the cost of the 797.

Richard, maybe I'll have to take you out in the new boat so you can see how well the side scan works.

 

[Pierre Siquet]

They could have call it "dive dry"