Thread: Finally getting there

Been in a rigging mode for awhile now on the boat, work on it till I lose motivation then quit. Took off an Ulterra that was damaged by radiant heat from a building burning down next door. It still worked except for the built in transducers, and looked a little Frankenstein-ish, got hot enough to melt the plastic parts a bit.
It always worked well, but I stressed a lot about the possibility of getting stuck miles up the river with it deployed, not being able to stow it.
And after I finally gave in to the FFS bug, it limited options. Had to use a separate pole mount.


Anyhow, replaced it with an Ultrex Quest, and went ahead and sprung for the mega live target lock.
Yesterday I finally got all the cables ran and powered it all up. Had to take steps off the trailer so I could deploy it on the trailer. Bungeed a pail of water to the mega live transducer so it would play nice - they have a sensor that won’t let it run out of water. Anyhow, I was really concerned what was going to happen with my networked Helixes since I had the Ulterra hooked to them previously. H’birds auto detect new accessories, and was afraid they would lose their mind.

What I did was, before I hooked up trolling motor and target lock to the Ethernet hub, I pulled out map cards and did reset to factory defaults on both Helixes. Powered everything down, hooked up tm and ml, then power back on. I was flabbergasted, it all works! You can set the target lock in several different modes.
You can manually turn the transducer from the target lock foot pedal or either sonar screen. You can set it to sync with the tm head, and turn with it just like you had transducer mounted to the tm shaft.
Can even set it to continuously sweep left-right over about a 120 degree arc. Or, you can hit a button to keep it pointing towards what you’re looking at, even if you’re on spot lock and the boat is twisting and turning. First trip to the water, I know I’ll be pushing buttons and playing more than fishing. But just part of it for me.

Had one little moment of confusion, pairing the target lock heading sensor to everything. It, and the foot pedal are Bluetooth. Got the pedal paired, but couldn’t get the heading sensor. Like a dummy, I was pushing the pair button on tm head. I know it has built in heading sensor, unlike the Ulterra I took off. It used a separate Bluetooth heading sensor that I took off when I removed the tm. What I was missing was, the target lock has its own heading sensor with a pair button. Standing on the ground, boat on trailer, I couldn’t see the top of it. Once I found and pushed the pair button on it, everything came alive and started working.


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Got out on the lake today, finally.
The target lock thing is pretty amazing. Now I’ll tell you straight, I’m a dummy with the FFS thing. I’ve spent a lot of hours trying to learn it for very few fish. It’s been one of the hardest things I’ve tried to figure out.
But at least for me, I think the target lock is making it easier. I can just concentrate on the rod instead of turning a transducer pole with one hand. But I am and will probably always be a troller. And that’s where the big news came in, I’m looking at amp draw at trolling speed on my phone, Bluetooth from the batteries.
This brushless quest motor - I’m hardly believing what I’m seeing. At 1.7 mph, it’s pulling half or less the amps my brush motor was. Think I’m really gonna be liking that! Did not catch a fish like I figured it would go, spent several hours pushing buttons, changing settings. Had one bite, pulled the tube down on the hook, probably a bream. But think it’s sorted out enough that next trip it’ll be on. After in/out a few times I’m getting comfortable with the lift assist Ultrex mount. Miss pushing a button on the Ulterra a little, but don’t have to worry about getting stuck with it down anymore. Just grab the cord and heave, it’s coming in.


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