Lowrance electronic HDS-5 Fish Finder User Manual


 
117
Troubleshooting
transducer cables away from other electrical wiring on the
boat.
When trolling over weed beds in 20ft of water or less, you 3.
may experience vertical bars, loss of the chart picture, or
the digital depth. First, do a soft reset of the unit. Then go
to the Full Sonar Chart screen. Press Menu and select So-
nar Features. Now turn the Chart Manual Mode to On. This
will leave everything in Automatic Mode except depth. Now
go back to the main menu and set the depth range for the
depth you are in such as 0-20 feet.
It can sometimes be difcult for a high-powered unit to cap-4.
ture the lightning-fast return in shallow water. Turn off the
automatic sensitivity setting and manually reduce the sensi-
tivity until the unit locks onto the bottom.
If two or more sonar units using the same frequency are op-5.
erating at the same time, one or more of them may lose the
depth reading due to the interference. It is like two radio sta-
tions trying to both broadcast on 97.3FM. In shallow water,
if the transducers are far enough apart, you may be able to
operate them together. However, the deeper the water, the
wider the beams spread out. When they cross each other,
the interference occurs.
If you are using a transom-mounted transducer, the angle 1.
of the transducer may prevent a sh arch from displaying
properly. If the arch slopes up but not down, then the front of
the transducer is too high and needs to be lowered. If only
the back half of the arch is shown, the nose of the trans-
ducer is angled too low and needs to be raised. This is the
most common problem if a partial arch is displayed.
The sensitivity may not be high enough. For the unit to dis-2.
play a sh arch, it has to be able to receive the sh’s echo
from the time it enters the cone until it leaves. If the sensitiv-
ity is not high enough, the unit shows the sh only when it is
in the center of the cone.
Use the Zoom feature. It is much easier to display sh arch-3.
es when zoomed in on a small range of water than a large
one. If your boat is in water deeper than 20ft, try setting the
upper and lower limits to a 20ft depth section, such as 40ft
No sh arches when Fish I.D. is turned off