Using Legacy Sonar for Live Sonar

[Rojo]

Well I had to try this as the forward looking sonar transducers I like just seems to start freezing around 200 hours. My last one started freezing at 7 months of service. So what I am experimenting with are older Legacy Equipment (name given by mfg industry). Paying $1500+ for a Live Sonar View for looking at Structure only (this won't work for looking at a fish while hand feeding it a jig commonly referred to as Livescope fishing) seems too high a price for the application I use them for. Also since we are running 2D Sonar it can be rigged with a transducer selector switch. Two or more transducers can be used simply selecting the particular transducer you want. Getting in the weeds a bit, you can't as far as I know switch between 3D transducers without a added Sonar box. The Legacy Humminbird equipment can be rigged with a Humminbird Sonar Switch. Also Humminbird makes Y - Cables so you can split your sonar signals between 2 transducers like a 2D (looking forward) and a 3D (looking down like on the trolling motor). No switch is needed for that just selecting the correct view on the Display.

Here are 2 photos, the first I turn the transducer away from the dock and second I point the transducer at the dock. I'm using a Humminbird Trolling Motor Transducer TM-9-20T or something like that, a 2D 83/200 cheap Dual Beam Transducer for standard sonar. I have it on one of the custom sticks I build for my Livescope customers when I sell a system to them.



You can see in the second picture even the distance is correct and displayed on Top with the depth lines turned on. Now for the settings as I expected to be able to turn on either a Jigging Mode or use the RTS window but could not do either. So I turned the scroll speed to 10, set the view to Clear Scan, Sensitivity is down to 3, distance is set at 15ft, Frequency is set to 200 only, most transducers of any manufacture have a 200 crystal. The tests went out as far as 25ft with the same results. I also shot a video of the first test but need to upload it to YouTube. Hopefully with a little work here (more testing with different combinations) I will discover a even better way to recycle our old equipment and reduce the expenditures associated with purchasing Live Sonar systems unless that's exactly what you want to use it for. Personally I let the Jig Pole talk to my Fingers, I'm not a visual screen watching angler but I know numerous like that and you can't help what turns you on. The problem I am working on is when you arrive at your waypoint seeing exactly where the structure is. You can troll around quit a bit before it shows up on the display, this really eats up time. When landing a fish and you drift off location, the boat turns a bit, you either must mark the structure or have a way to scan to see where its at.

One more thing to add before closing this out, the display changed as fast as I swung the transducer at the structure then away. Basically it is "No Wait", even being a display of History with the scroll speed turned all the way up the display was changing as fast as I moved the transducer. Very easy to determine almost all the information I was buying a $999 transducer to do. More later.