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I got a lowrance elite 7 hdi fish finder and cant seem to get it to read properly. I know I have the transducer mounted properly. Trolling at slow speeds it looks like sugar on the screen. Sat on my boat in the water playing with this thing for hours going through all the settings. I have been reading around on the internet and sounds like alot of other people are having this problem. Just wondering if anybody else has one and what settings they have it on. Thanks
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I have the same thing and love it. my first thought when you said sugar on screen is what is your sesitivity set at?? Do you have it on auto??
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Had it on auto but couldnt get the fish arches to show up like they do in the simulator. I have the sensitivity on low. The down scan imaging is even worse I cant get anything to show up on that even with the sensitivity high. Tried messing with the surface clarity and noise rejection to. I guess there is an update or something for them to
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You may need to check your voltage I've had similar problems when the voltage was out of whack.
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do you have Electromagnetic interference. turn everything off.
hook the finder to a battery by its self. make sure the battery is over 12.volts. set to default.
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Thanks. I will keep messing with it and check voltage.
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I agree with liketrolling, some units require you to run a separate wire to your battery so you don't pick up interference. You could run a temp wire to see if it makes a difference. One more thing that can make a difference, is where the transducer is mounted. If there are rivets in front of it, that can cause problems and even having it mounted directly to an aluminum hull can cause issues on some boats.
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I dont think I have interference, my transducer is mounted on fiberglass if thats what you mean. I also dont have any other fish finders on at the same time.
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I tried running the wire directly to the battery already, but had same results.
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I have the Elite 5 and never had an issue until I smacked a floater at the Berry. Didn't think much about it at the time but the next weekend we was up at the Gorge and had exactly what you're describing. You call it sugar, I call it fly $hit. Either way it'll kill a weekend. I replaced the transducer and never had another problem. Maybe you got a bad "eyeball" from the factory. Just a thought. Good luck.
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Never thought of that. I was at the gorge during ice off kicking the ice around with my boat, might of knocked something with transducer
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Sounds like u got a nice one man. I'm sorry I'm no help. I got an old bottom line side finder I'm still trying to figure out. I shore fish and I heard you can actully use on shore with the sidefinder option. I'm kinda not so optimistic now. Have you ever used one of these old school finders? I'm all ears
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Is this a Fishing Buddy you are talking about? I've had several Bottom Line finders but the fishing buddy is the only one I've seen with the side finder option. I have never heard of anyone using one on shore but I would doubt it would work because they are just like a regular finder, except they have a wider cone angle to see the side. I guess it is worth a try but don't get your hopes up too high.
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Thanks for the reading material. That made more sense of things. Sounds like I got some work to do.
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Keep in mind that the transducer should be submerged. Doing a dry run can easily burn it out. It relies on cooling to function. This has happened with me with older units where it would only read bottom and no fish arches, shame on me. A new transducer fixed it.
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Yeah its a fishin buddy. I googled it an found that you can use it for shore fishing. Hell I'm still trying to figure the this thing out period. With the side finder it seems possible right? If u have the sonar shoot out out from the side, all u need to do is aim the sonar to the direction your going to fish. See if there's any blips. Its worth a try.
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Your transducer will not burn up out of water . Some are mounted inside the hull and dry all the time . Mine is mounted on the transome and I l accidentally left my fish finder on until my battery went dead and have never hurt the transducer .
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[quote curt69]Your transducer will not burn up out of water . Some are mounted inside the hull and dry all the time . Mine is mounted on the transome and I l accidentally left my fish finder on until my battery went dead and have never hurt the transducer .[/quote]
Thru the hull type seem to have better qualities for any sonar unit. Talking to a factory rep is how I was convinced when I submitted the complaint about my transducer not working. But that doesn't eliminate the possibility of a power surge which I have no evidence of or didn't notice. Either way I look at it, I still needed another transducer which fixed the problem. To carry this out further I'm not a Lowrance fan like I was once. I have been seeing too many bandaid fixes with there products and not actually addressing a true fix. The reviews/complaints are out there. I'm still running a couple of their older units in GPS & a separate sonar unit until their life extinguish but also opted to go with a Raymarine A57D GPS/sonar unit as a second set. You can't beat HD quality and this unit is easy to operate. This is only my opinion. The market is competitive and reasonable priced with other brand units.
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I got a shoot thru hull transducer on a separate unit and the only thing I use that finder for is depth reading while on plain, I turn that off when I start trolling and use other transom mounted transducer. I am not a big fan of lowrance either mainly because of their customer service. I think every finder has its problems, more so than others.
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