HD-S8 questions...help please

First off I am new to this forum and the reason that I signed up is that I understand there are some pretty smart cookies on here with electronics. Not only that I love to crappie fish as well and have lurked here for sometime. Now here's my questions.
I recently purchased a hds-8 with the structure scan option and am having trouble getting the 2d sonar to look the way that I think it should. My old little 5 inch (x102 i think) graph had a very crisp detail of the bottom as well as very little surface clutter on the screen. The fish appeared as thin ( about 1/16 thick) lines on the screen except for when they were very close to the transponder....ie 10' or less. The fish would normally have a shallow arch to them if they were deeper than 10'. Straight lines sometimes as well and I'm ok with that. When I say the the detail was crisp i mean it's like it was using all it's pixels !! If I wanted the fish to appear thicker I could crank up on the sensitivity and get them thicker as well as draw up some clutter. I was happy and used to this setup and here is where things go bad.....
The hds-8 has a very cartoon appearance to me ! I have a lot of surface clutter and even with the surface clutter filter cranked up on high I still have a lot of it. The bottom surface is very blotchy and not nearly as crisp as I would expect. The fish appear as more blobby like and I can't seem to get this adjusted out of it. If I use downscan things appear as they should as far as crispness and clarity go.I spent 4 hours on the water with it yesterday and decided I need some help. I should have written down my settings so I could post them here but don't know if it would really matter because I have had it all over the place and can't seem to get it right. A few things I do know...I have the transponder(standard sonar) mounted exactly where my old one was and since they are the same size I would assume that it is very close to being perfect....by the way I am loosing the signal when I get to about 25MPH also. The update has been added to this unit as well. One more note, If i put the unit on simulate I get the crisp look that I am after so I know that it will do it.....just as long as I am sitting in my drive...lol. If anyone has some answers I am all ears and will take the boat to a local lake to try somethings out just as soon as I get some opinions that I think may work. Thanks....Randy

Remember your are seeing much more with the HDS's. Something to check is,,,have you selected the transducer you are using? When you get these units they have a default to, transducer,,unknown. Also if you 'soft reset' this unit it will defaut to 'unknown'. In your manual, look at page 89. This sure helped mine. I had a 510 & 522 and LOVED those screens. I have that again,,,, even better.:D:D:D:D <*)}}}><

Brrrrr...it's cold out. I been out checkin the Transducer settings and Crappie-chatt may be on to something. It was set on unknown and I set it to 83/200khz. We'll have to see if that helps when I get it to the water. I will be itchin to get it out again now. Maybe after this snowstorm I can run it back to the lake.

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Originally Posted by Kat-Addict

Brrrrr...it's cold out. I been out checkin the Transducer settings and Crappie-chatt may be on to something. It was set on unknown and I set it to 83/200khz. We'll have to see if that helps when I get it to the water. I will be itchin to get it out again now. Maybe after this snowstorm I can run it back to the lake.

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Welcome to the site kat-addict! Hopefully these guys can boost your learning curb with setting up your graph like I helped you with catching fish all these years!!:D:D:D:D:D:D

welcome aboard kat-addict. when you get on the water also set your unit to shallow water to start with, see how you like it. doing the transducer thing is first. I took chatts advice and it worked, I hate reading, but in the case of these new electronics,it is a must. read as much as possible, the more I read the more I think I know.

So true,,,SO TRUE, beagle mon. I take the manual in the bathroom :eek::eek::eek: I also have it with me on the water. One of these days I'll be able to get out on the water but,,,another cold week ahead. going to be real busy the next few weeks with sport shows & seminars with the KDWP. Then by the end of March,,,might see some open water,,,somewhere! <*)}}}><

Beagle....do you mean 200khz ? Thats where I have been running it because thats what my old one was !

On page 9, slecting a fishing mode. :D:D <*)}}}><

Ah..yes I found it. We must have different books chatt ! Mine is on page 82. I can try that when I get on the water next. I normally run white backround with yellow/blue bottom ! I appreciate all the help I'm getting guys !!

Well I just installed my hds7 and Lss-1 and in the garage it looks great.Kat, asked the question, Chatt answered it and I just bet you that you two guys just saved me from having day 1 disgusted cause I bet I would have had that very same issue. I want to thank the both of you for the question and the answer. I love this site and apreciate folks helping other folks. I cant wait to try mine out. Weather gonna have to cooperate now and we will see what happens. :)

that is what it is all about, people helping people,

I just installed my structure scan yesterday thanks for the tip also. Waiting on my HDS 10 to arrive.

https://mail.google.com/mail/h/105ql...disp=inline&zw Got this screen shot from another board. I think :D:D:D the DownScan will show fish!!! <*)}}}><

Was able to get out on the river last week and took a couple snap shots. After getting some help here on the forum I selected the correct transducer from the menu and this seemed to help a bunch. The pics still seem to be Blobbish under 20' or so but are acceptible deeper than that. Wish I would have gotten a few better pics to post here but this is what I was able to get at the time.

After rerouting my TD wires all by themselves( 2' away from everything else) and running dedicated power wires to both the lss-1 and the hds-8 I still have a small amount of interference on the sidescan. This happens when the engine is at idle. If I throttle up a bit it goes away.Plugs are resistor and I don't know how to tell if I have a alternator filter or not. It only irritates me because I know it's not supposed to be there...lol. It is easy to look through the noise. I may call suzuki today and see if they have a filter. I think with a little more fine tuning on the graph I will be able to get it where I want it. Thanks to all for the help !
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c1...2-13-10001.png

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c1...2-13-10002.png

The second shot shows some bridge pilings on the ohio river. I would have expected these to look much larger as I cruised past them!

I don't know about the HDS, models but I have the HB 997 ,the transducer being set parrellel to the bottom with people in the boat is critical , that made all the differance .

I don't know anything about the new HDS but hope to have one someday. Anyway on one of the pictures,I see a 91% senstively setting,now on regular fish sonars this would be too high of a setting,now like I said don't know anything about the new HDS but could this be showing too much.:confused:
LittleJohn

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Originally Posted by LittleJohn

I don't know anything about the new HDS but hope to have one someday. Anyway on one of the pictures,I see a 91% senstively setting,now on regular fish sonars this would be too high of a setting,now like I said don't know anything about the new HDS but could this be showing too much.:confused:
LittleJohn

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Good question John !! With my old lowrance I normally ran around 70%. I was paying more attention to the bottom fill of yellow (amount of yellow on the bottom)while setting the sensitivity and not the fish. The colors that you see on the bottom is what I was used to on the old graph......still dosn't mean it is correct !!

http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/a...0/shot14-1.pnghttp://i979.photobucket.com/albums/a...010/shot12.png 1.crappie on a stump. 2.pvc on a bridge.

Hey Kat,
First off, where is your transducer mounted? Is it outside the boat or epoxied in the bottom? The reason I'm asking this is because it looks like your transducer is not getting a clear shot. The first clue to this is that you are loosing your signal at 25 MPH. I can run 60 MPH and not loose my depth reading. I couldn't do this with any other of the Lowrance units I used in the past. I epoxied the transducer (skimmer) in the bottom of my boat and this thing reads perfect. Your pictures look like the transducer (if epoxied) is not mounted correctly. You should be getting very clean, clear pictures. Your sidescan (as I'm sure you know) is using a different transducer and it is getting a clear shot with nothing between it and the water. You said you mounted this transducer in the same spot as your old one...if epoxied, you may have not got the spot cleaned off enough or you have air pockets in your epoxy. If its mounted outside the boat and all your settings are correct, you may have a bad transducer.

Sixfin....cool name by the way, I have the transponder on the back of the boat....I cured the problem with loosing the signal at high speeds ie. raised the td just a bit. I guess I had it down a little more than half the puck showing, That part is good now. It's not dead nuts level but very close to it. I am gonna try and reclock those crummy little serrated slots they expect "normal" eyes to be able to see and try and get it a tad better.

I will take several more snap shots next time out and will use various settings while doing so.....deep and shallow...Hope to get out soon. Keep an eye out for a new post when i do. Thanks for the help guys....Randy