Thread: Helix 9 side imaging help

Not sure about the 9, but my Helix 10 shows trees and other items great. Ran across some spots today. That on my old 987c-Si you could tell something was there. But on the 10 it looked more like a picture. Showed a drop with a tree haning off it. And could see every fish hanging around the tree. Same for an old Dock, that isi flipped upside down. Been laying there for 8 or so years. On my old unit it showed it enough you could see the floor joist on it. But today with the 10. We could see the cracks between the floor boards. Its in 25ft of water and was washed in there in high waters. Unreal how much these new units are over the older ones.
Pete

Hard to know what you mean by not seeing them clearly, snap a pic of what you are seeing and it will help.

If you mean they are too small to see clearly, try bringing the SI range in to 40-60 ft. It makes everything much "bigger" on the screen. I have also found that using the SI only screen and switching to the triple view only when I see something snazzy right under the boat makes better use of the big screen. If you are running a bank or looking at laydowns try using right or left side only, that way you get double the screen size showing whatever it is you want to see.

I have been toying with the idea of using the contour mode where it doesn't show the water column in the center to further enhance the size of the returns but haven't done so yet.

As far as brightness turn it up to the point where the lake floor looks really hot or bright white and then back off until you can see details clearly.

Not a Helix user yet but what I had to learn on my first SI unit was to turn the sensitivity down, like to 4-6. I mostly fish clear water, soft bottom lakes with little to no features along the bottom, all less then 40' deep in the deepest parts. To my eyes, it became easier to find both fish and what little structure there was when I went below the middle setting on both contrast and sensitivity. It will depend on the color pallet you choose where you end up.

On the small screen of my 598, 60' is about the max when looking for structure and when looking for fish I'm usually below 50 because the fish dots are so small. That new Helix 9 should be awesome when you get it figured out.

Don't give up, play back your recordings time after time with different settings. You'll get it and then you'll say "Wow".

The most common oversight I see with my Sonar students is leaving the SI unit in Default for Chart speed ..which is 5 ...

This Chart speed (5) is way too fast for most SI scanning ... and merely "smears" the data on the SI image ...

Match Chart speed to boat speed ...

Rickie

I guess what I mean is nothing is showing up. Every now and then you can see a bright white spot that I assume is a fish but other than that I'm not getting any detail on the screen. Definitely not seeing brush or logs that I know for sure are down there. I've got the chart speed set at 3 which is how fast I run the boat, sensitivity at 11, contrast at 8 and SI range at 50 but nothing is showing up. When I go this weekend I'll take a picture to post. Maybe I'm just expecting too much but I see screen shots of the same unit and you can clearly see brush and fish on them.

Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

Have you made any recordings of your trips so far that you can play back at home? If not, get an SD card and record some moving images. I like to use 8-10 minute segments for experimenting back at the house.

Playing with those recordings from waters I actually fish later at leisure at home and pushing buttons was my best learning.

Make sure you got by some stuff visible above water and see what it looks like under water. Tree tops, standing timber, boat ramps etc. I just upgraded to a helix 10 from a 899 to get bigger screen and clearer pics. But I could still see everything on my 899 with standard ducer.

Yeah you made the same mistake as me. You have to upgrade to the HDSI Transducer to get the really clear pictures. The salesman didn't tell me this info at the time of purchase. I have the Helix 9 SI and swore the unit was bad. With a little research I found out I needed to upgrade the transducer and make a few adjustments in the settings according to the lake you're fishing. Once you open the new unit Humminbird will not give you a full refund or exchange on the transducer. Your best bet is to keep the old transducer in case of emergency.