Doc Sonar,
I just purchased a Ranger 620VS and have a Lowrance HDS 10 at the console and Lowrance HDS 5 on the bow. I am having problems with loosing bottom at speed over 10 mph. I took it back to the boat dealer and they put an external transducer mounted back by the drain plug to use instead of the thru-hull transducer. Well, my sonar unit I still have the same problem of not being able to read bottom when moving. I called the dealer and they said to turn up the ping speed as high as it goes, but that didn’t work so I called Lowrance and they told me the transducer was not mounted deep enough. Before this boat I had the same issue. Do you have any advice?
Thanks, S.B.

Lowrance HDS units have difference choices of views which can be adjusted using the PAGES button. You can select the most common choice of sonar and chart or select from the many choices.
The choices are different for the different screens of the Lowrance HDS 5, 7, 8, and 10 because four windows on the 5-inch screen doesn’t work well.

 

When you stop and think about how far Electronics have come it is just mind boggling. I was talking with my good friend Doug Vahrenberg and he asked me to do this article.  He gave me some great photos of the old units of yesteryear which I have included.  What in the world did we do before we had fishfinders like we have today?  The Corps of Engineers started damming up large rivers creating "structure", but how did you find it out in the middle of the lake?  I wanted to pass along this story Vahrenberg told me. "When I was displaying the old Humminbird graphs at a Sports show a man came up to me and told me how they found structure. They would drag an old window weight on a rope. When it would get slack in the line it was either a point or a hump. That's how they found structure in a lake.  They said the slacker the line or farther it dragged behind the boat the shallower the hump.  They said it made the difference as they were the first to fish offshore structure."   Think how many hours or more like days, it took to learn the bottom with a window weight and string!