Thread: Discussion on Lowrance Elite 5 DSI/Chartplotter ....

Originally Posted by rnvinc

Pappy the learning curve is not as difficult as it may seem...

1. Always be aware of the shape of your sonar beam (I think you have that mental picture already)...
2. Always be aware of how those individual sonar pings (in that sonar beam shape) are plotted on your screen (I think you have that mental picture already)...
3. Time practicing....

I think you will be glad you put that unit on the front with you.....

The front is where you fish...Your most advantageous tool (your E5DSI) should be up there with you...

I'm looking forward to pix from your experiences with the E5DSI...

Rickie

Yeah, Rickie ... I think I'm pretty much down with the shape of my cone & how that relates to the picture on the screen. I am wondering, though ... do you know the actual "degree" of cone angle spread that this unit throws out ?? Like I said before ... if I know that my elongated cone is 6deg front to back & 45deg left to right, then I'll have a better idea of the area's size & shape as it relates to the depth of water I'm in. I'd just have a better mental picture to compare to the screen's picture. Like when I used a 2d unit w/20deg cone angle ... I knew the "circle" on the bottom was 1/3 as wide as the depth (20fow = 7ft wide circle) .... so the swath I was seeing was ~ 3.5ft to either side of the transducers position. That helped me with rod/bait placement, and pinpointed the cover into a small area. With the DSI cone shape being elongated out to each side (in relation to the direction the TM is pointed) ... knowing the degree of angle would give me a better idea of what patch of bottom I'm seeing, and where to make bouy drops that wouldn't be right IN the cover, as well as how to spread my poles or where to concentrate my baits.

... cp

i have the elite 4 dsi. i've had it for about 4 months now. i came from the hb 595c.it is kinda hard to get understandable material on it. the bright spot to this unit to me is the dsi feature it is much sharper than my other.as for everything else i have to play with the unit. i still havent figured out how once youv'e marked a way point how to go back to it. i dont have the sd card so maybe thats it.anyway i'd say i'm about 80% satisfied with this unit.i'll give it a while longer to get more adept with it.

Originally Posted by lil re-speck

i have the elite 4 dsi. i've had it for about 4 months now. i came from the hb 595c.it is kinda hard to get understandable material on it. the bright spot to this unit to me is the dsi feature it is much sharper than my other.as for everything else i have to play with the unit. i still havent figured out how once youv'e marked a way point how to go back to it. i dont have the sd card so maybe thats it.anyway i'd say i'm about 80% satisfied with this unit.i'll give it a while longer to get more adept with it.

Thanks for bringing that up, brother "re-speck" ... Thumbs Up

Even though this thread is specifically about the Elite 5 DSI ... I'm sure there are many similar functions on the Elite 4 DSI model. I haven't had the opportunity to use my unit to mark waypoints, then return to them, so I'd be interested in a discussion on the "how to" of that function of the unit. Even with 26pgs of posts, I don't recall this function being discussed.

I won't expect you to read thru all 26pgs of this thread ... but, I would advise you to look thru the first several & find the posts concerning the transducer angles. Understanding what angle & shape the transducer signal is, will help you understand what information is being portrayed on your screen. And yes, you will have to "play around" with the settings & color pallets, in different situations ... in order to find which one is best suited for the conditions at hand. The more diverse the conditions, the more menu choices you'll have to go thru to pick the most favorable settings.

Keep us updated/informed on your progress.

... cp

Finally got around to manually adding a few waypoints from the 100+ that I transcribed into GPS coords. Now all I need to do is go to that lake & see if I can use the E5DSI to find them. It appears, according to my HotSpots map, that most of the brush & pallet stacks were placed in ~15ft of water. That should make them very usable from prespawn to the late Fall feeding binge. Good thinking on the part of the KDFWR !!

... cp

Hey, Mate .... my problem with the E5DSI was that the coordinates I was getting WAS in Decimal Degrees, and the unit is set to receive only GPS coordinates. I found a website that converted long/lat numbers into four different formats, and used that to change the numbers over to what the unit used. Here's the website : GPS Coordinate Converter, Maps and Info

I think on some of the Humminbird units, there's a "choice" menu for what format you use for the coordinates. I've found no such menu for the E5DSI ... just the GPS settings menu, as explained in the previous posts.

After I got all 90 sets of lat/long numbers converted & written down ... it took me about 30-45mins to manually place them into the unit. Once I got the button pressing sequence down, I was jammin'em in pretty fast

As I understand it, you can mark a waypoint (while on the water) with a couple of button presses ... but, I haven't tried that, yet. I had the unit out this weekend, and did go to a few of the waypoints I'd manually converted/entered ... and the unit took me right to the brush piles !! All I had to do was keep zooming down as I approached the waypoint icon on the screen, and once I got it down to the 20ft range (the lowest it goes) ... and got the triangle (boat) icon centered & directly over the waypoint mark ... the brush pile image started coming on screen.

... cp

[QUOTE=
As I understand it, you can mark a waypoint (while on the water) with a couple of button presses ... but, I haven't tried that, yet. ... cp [/QUOTE]

cp it really is that easy just the enter button twice.but the unit assigns a number so if i save more than one i have to rename them so i know where they are by the name.it is kind of a pain, more work than i want to do while fishing but not bad if i'm just out looking.i haven't been able to go back to my saved spots using the unit but reading your last posts gave me some clues.
thanks for this thread!

Originally Posted by rumrunner

cp it really is that easy just the enter button twice.but the unit assigns a number so if i save more than one i have to rename them so i know where they are by the name.it is kind of a pain, more work than i want to do while fishing but not bad if i'm just out looking.i haven't been able to go back to my saved spots using the unit but reading your last posts gave me some clues.
thanks for this thread!

You don't have to rename waypoints. As you enter them the unit will number them sequentiality. Up to 3000

Originally Posted by rumrunner

cp it really is that easy just the enter button twice.but the unit assigns a number so if i save more than one i have to rename them so i know where they are by the name.it is kind of a pain, more work than i want to do while fishing but not bad if i'm just out looking.i haven't been able to go back to my saved spots using the unit but reading your last posts gave me some clues.
thanks for this thread!

I thought it was "Enter button twice" ... but I wasn't sure. Thanks for confirming that !!

Any new waypoint gets a number assigned ... but, I don't think it will assign the same number to two different waypoints. So, why would you have to "rename" the new waypoint ?? I've got 98 waypoints marked, and they're "named" with the number assigned to them in the order in which I entered them. And they ALL have the same icon. I could have used various other icons from the entry menu, but chose not to ... since they're all going to show up on the chart map, once I've got the chart map on screen (acquired position & returned to vessel). I'll know what type of cover the waypoint is marking, once I get it in the sonar beam ... so I really didn't see a need to give them "names".

And I'm not going to pull up the waypoint listing screen, & search through up to 3000 waypoints to find a specific "named" spot .... when I can simply open the chart screen & zoom in/out to find them. Am I misunderstanding what you're saying/doing ... or oversimplifying what I'm doing ??

... cp