Quote Originally Posted by Runnin View Post
I just had my Elite 5 DSI out for it's maiden voyage yesterday. It is waay better than what I had. The mapping (Lower Potomac) river was a little off with locations of islands etc. I went directly through an island at one point. The bottom pictures were excellent. I never saw any fish though. some of the images of emerging grass beds were impressive. Most water I was in was shallow. I do have some questions for you pros. The images show what is directly under the boat? Correct? How far to either side does it extend from transducer in say 10' of water? If I understand the posts from earlier in the thread correctly , the distance from the front to back is severely limited. It shows you what is beneath the transducer and that is about it. I had difficulty getting a depth at speed. It would lose it at about 15 - 20mph. Cruising off plane up to 10mph was awesome. If I change the frequency to 80ghz will that improve high speed performance? I never adjusted sensitivity. There seem to be some surface clutter at top. Didn't really bother me too much. I had to boost the brightness to max to see the screen. This seems like a nice unit. I'm anxious to become more familiar with it.
Runnin ... as I understand it, the unit puts out a "fan shaped" sonar ping ... something in the neighborhood of 3-6 degrees thick. Here's a couple of charts showing the size/type/width coverage of a DSI unit :

newDIbeams.png Photo by kosmo012 | Photobucket

http://www.bassfisher1.zoomshare.com...ngle_Chart.pdf

If you lose your depth signal at speed ... it could be your transducer isn't mounted correctly, you have the depth setting too shallow for the water depth you're running in, or there's something wrong somewhere. It should read at speeds up to 40mph ... but the optimal images come with speeds of 8mph & under.

Click on this : http://www.lowrance.com/Root/Lowranc...0153-001_w.pdf ... then print it out & study it. It will show you all the various menus & break them down as to what's in them & what they do.

I keep my "brightness" around 90-95% for daytime use .... but, having used it during the night and having the glare bother me, I'll drop that down to a point where it's not blinding me.

My unit is trolling motor mounted, so I'm just going on what I've read about transom mounts and not any personal experience. But, I can tell you this ... the more I use it & play with it, the more I find out what it can/can't do ... and I try & optimize the "can do's", as they apply to the fishing methods I use.

... cp