Bought a new HDS-7..Big Mistake!
I thought it was time to update electronics. I've been reading a lot on here and other places about Hummingbirds and all the problems people were having with the GPS part. Well, i was out Friday to a local boat dealership picking up some odds and ends when I saw the new Lowrance HDS-7. Boy, it sure looked nice plus one of the guys that works there showed me on the internet how the side scan was going to look when it comes out this fall. I was hooked. I already use Lowrance GPS's on my boat so I knew that Lowrance had somewhat of a grip on them and the salesman told me with the new High Definition antenna that updates 5 times a second, they where going to be extremely accurate. So I sheld out the money and put it on my boat. While opening the box, it had a slip of paper that said it needed a software update. That's right, straight out of the box and you need to update it. Well, after four hours of trying to get the program download from Lowrance (that's another story) and finally uploaded to my HDS-7, I was ready to play with it. That's when I found out that it doesn't recognize what type of transducer you have on it so you have to finger through the tons of menus to find out where to enter it. The owners manual that came with it was about as useless as tits on a boar hog. Finally got that entered and off to the water I go. Now, I started out using Ray Jefferson flashers and have used everything in between but I will tell you this....you better have a degree in PLC's or computer programming before you tackle this rascal. After spending the better part of the day on the water figuring out menus and settings I have come to the conclusion that I have wasted my money! The GPS section will not recognize the new fancy antenna and yes, I set up my NMEA 2000 cable correctly. If you get less than 10 feet of water, the depthfinder slows down tremendously no matter what frequency or ping speed you set it at. When you go to split screen, say chart on left and depthfinder on right, you can only adjust the screen on the left. You have to back out of that screen and go to another menu to load the sonar screen to do any adjustments and vice versa. Plus the temp displayed numbers take up half of the screen. Haven't found a way to adjust that yet. It looks like I have jumped the gun. I should have waited till these units have been out a year before I purchased one but I thought maybe this time, with all the technology out there, that Lowrance would finally get it right the first time. Well, this was an expensive lesson!
The only way to have a good fishing spot is to make it yourself!