Humminbird ?

So I bought 2 new units a helix 5 si gps mounted on trolling motor and a helix 5 di gps on consol. I watched several videos on setting them up but these are my first good units. I took the boat out just to play and these are the issues I'm having.1st On di and 2d sometimes the bottom of the lake will disappear when it does it will do it on both at the same time and I'm sure of how deep the water is so I know I have the bottom range set good. 2nd the depth shown is way off sometimes I was in 12 foot of water and it was showing 4 feet. 3rd don't know if it's supposed to do this but the depth reading will disappear off the screen then show up for a second then gone again. 4th the unit on my trolling motor when switched to di will show good picture for a second then gray lines will scroll across the screen. 5th I'm sure this one is all me but after getting the units set where I get a decent picture I have yet to see a fish on them even though I know fish were there cause I was catching them. I pulled over a brush pile in 12 fow had a good image of it on di and 2d played with settings but never saw anything that resembled a fish so I fished it and caught 4 and missed a couple more. Sorry for the long post I'm just pulling my hair out trying to learn these things anyone with experience with the helix units anything you can tell me about how you have yours set up would be greatly appreciated.

It sounds like you have multiple problems, so you will need to isolate each humminbird unit from each other and also the trolling motor from them because it could be introducing noise also. At least until you can get them to work individually and then you should be able to tie them back together or network them. The first thing i would do is make sure the units have their own battery source, this will help with noise if there is any. Sometimes my 787 will lose the bottom also but only past 100ft. Check to see if the bottom depth is not set manually above the actual depth of the lake. Also check for the amount of keel offset you have programmed.
Third try setting up your units to see fish in around twenty feet and you should be in the ballpark. Hope this helps some...

In addition to what fishingman mentions above ...:

Can you post pictures of the xducers mounted on your boat ... ??

Maybe the xducers are not level with the water's surface ...

Rickie

:welcome from South Central Mississippi. This sounds like you are trying to run both sonars at the same time. The sonars bounce sound off the bottom and it comes back to the transducers and if the boat is at a certain distance from the bottom, one sonar will pick up both or the other sound and cause all kinds of interference. So try just running one sonar at a time. The Di and SI units the boat has to be moving at somewhat speed(best 2-4 mph) to work right. Now 2d will work while sitting stationary but then the fish will have to swim tru the sound cone to show up as being there. This youtube will tell you why fish show up on sonar and why they fail to show up. Hope this give you some help with your sonar problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm1dC3l9xEA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSMvq6QrjOs

Thanks everybody. I got it straightened out. Had to drop the console transducer about half an inch change the way my cables were run to get them away from everything else and played with the settings for about 3 hours lol. I did find a few schools of crappie while I was out playing with them gonna go after them this weekend. Thanks again

Glad you found out the problems. Now have a Crappie Day:biggrin