favorite electronics

[wannabecrappieking]

Looking to upgrade my electronics this year from my lowrance 522 and my lowrance 135, what are everyones favorites and good finders for locating brush and creek channels

[kwerdal]

you stuff is better then mine so i have no clue LOL I did get a used 937c for Christmas for next year!! now I have to figure out how to use it LOL

[brushnjigs]

I love my X-38s. Dont waste your money on a 5" screen. The only ones that would be better would be the HDS units. I guess I will have to get one of the 8s next spring. Just hate to write the check, but with the side image photos I have seen, guess I will have to choke and moan and buy one.

[Billbob]

BIG screen i have a hds8 and a 997 hb both are good

[kwerdal]

Hopfully Bartman will chime in he has an SI unit but I am not sure wich one

[gijimbo]

I have a lowrance HDS-5X. I didn't need GPS or built in lake maps that is why I bought the 5X model. I am really pleased with it. The cone angles are 60 and 120 degrees for all HDS units. This wide angle allows you to cover more area to get a better picture of what's below you.

Along with looking at the "eye candy" graphics and features, pay close attention to cone angles. Work the trigonometry to figure out the area you are really covering at a particular depth. If you have too narrow of a cone angle you will pass over details in the bottom and never know it. Think of it this way, look at the world through a coffee straw and see just how much detail you are missing when you turn you head. This is same thing holds true for to narrow of cone angle.

Here is the formula for figuring the diameter of the cone for any depth of water and any cone angle:

Cone Diameter = 2(Tan(1/2 cone angle) * depth of water)

Example: 30 degree cone angle in 20 foot of water

Cone Diameter = 2(Tan(15) * 20)
Cone Diameter = 2(0.2679 * 20)
Cone Diameter = 2(5.3589)
Cone Diameter = 10.7179 Feet

So you can roughly say that for 2 foot of depth you have 1 foot in diameter. This sounds good until you find out the fish are 6 foot down in 20 feet of water. This would mean you only have approximately a 3 foot diameter cone at that point.

If you have any problems working the formula just PM me and I'll help you out.

Hope this helps.

Jim

[gijimbo]

There is a draw back to my model (HDS-5X). It does not have a card reader in it. Therefore when I need to do software updates I need to send the unit back to the factory to get it done. If I had a second unit with a card reader then I could network them together to update the HDS-5X model. This unit has performed excellent for me. It gives great detail of the bottom and fish.

Lowrance has just released the Structure Scan module for all HDS models. This allows all HDS models to have side imaging along with down scan capability.

Hope this helps.

Jim