Thread: Helix question

mine was also doing this sunday. went to transducer settings and picked a different one and no problem for the rest of the day

Originally Posted by Iwannafish

I have been getting some strange readings on my Helix 9 sonar unit at the front of my boat. From time to time I see two lake bottoms. One at the proper depth and another about twice as deep. Head reports the deeper depth in the info corner. For instance, I am in 12 foot of water. I see the bottom at 12 foot, but I see another bottom at 24 foot, and the readout shoes depth at 24 foot. I adjusted various settings, but none seemed to permanently rectify the problem. Any advice from the group?


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The only way to solve that double image issue is to take it off of the auto depth mode and manually set the bottom depth. Mine do the same thing on the G2N 10's I'm running on my Xpress demo now. One of the many things I don't like about the birds. I was also told by Humminbird to set the depth setting to 10' below the deepest part of the lake on the main sonar menu so the unit would read the depth correctly instead of changing water depths in shallow water. When I get below about 7-8 feet, mine says 19' or whatever then changes back and forth to the right depth. That fix still doesn't work right tho. It still loses the correct bottom depth in shallow water. I also hate being in the donut at slow speeds because the navigation automatically reverts back to North Up when in the donut instead of reading course up or heading up which is how I set mine. I had to buy a Heading sensor to correct that, but haven't tried it yet. Hope it Really works. I've heard it doesn't.

Just got all of my new Lowrance HDS Carbon units in. Can't wait to get back to a unit with no donut and shows the right depths, and the course up ALL the time at Any speed. I also like the Insight mapping in the Lowrance. It shows all of the older ditches and house foundations, bridges and man made structures better than anything else out there.

I'm going to run both brands on my new Ranger demo because some of the features on the birds I do like, like the mapping with the depth zone locks and the contour adjustments, and the 360, and the link for running ledges. Their sonar and navigation stinks overall tho. On the plus side, their mega Imaging is awesome. Clear as a bell even in muddy water.

As with boats, there's no perfect beast for every situation.


BRM