jrc plotter

[peter_oc]

any one out there use a jrc plot 500f fish finder , Peter

[Mantaray]

What's the specific question?

[peter_oc]

thinking of buying one for our new boat just wanted to here from other uses to see what they thought of them :)

[Mantaray]

thinking of buying one for our new boat just wanted to here from other uses to see what they thought of them :)

mate, "thought of them" now that is an extremely wide open field? want to narrow it down a little bit. In any case basically your standard combo GPS/sounder, which requires an external GPS of sort and uses C-Map. Does most things like most others.

[peter_oc]

its gps/sounder in one with a c-map , i haven't seen a lot of them around?

[Mantaray]

If you want C-map then go direct to C-Map and get the list of manufacturers that support C-map.

[GBC]

My humble opinion - ff50 great sounder, plot 50 uses all the good buttons from the sounder and makes it harder to tune fast, and less user friendly. Also the plotter function is getting old tech now and is slow to draw.
Use the money you save buying the ff50 to get a stand alone plotter and you'll have a great setup.

[the_bomber]

GBC does your wife know how many posts you have? Do you live on this thing? As GBC knows I actually have a F500 and to quote Rob K "As a plotter, it makes a good sounder". I bought another plotter as the plotter sounder combo drove me nuts. The ff50 had been temporarily discontinued at the time so I bought it for the sounder. I would buy an ff50 as GBC suggests and buy a separate plotter.

The plotter is not logical in its set up like some of the other brands. But so far as a sounder is cocerned I think plenty of people will have sung the praises of the ff50.

[Smithy]

Have been running a Plot 500F for a little while now. Bought it during that 12 months or so when the FF50 was discontinued. That was a crap move on their behalf and I got stuck with it. Would have prefered the FF50. I am interested in speed through the water because I troll for Marlin and want to know what the current is doing. Can't get water speed up on the sounder page other than for a crappy graph which chews up half the screen.

As for the plotter side of it I just connected up a Garmin to it via NMEA and was pleasently surprised by the look of it. Time will tell. I doubt if the sounder is actually missing any of the functions that the FF50 has, I am guessing it is like is alluded to above that you have to use more buttons or go through more menus to change settings and the like. The JRC certainly paints a nice picture of fish and the bottom.

As for charts, I love the Navonics Gold over the C-map. Haven't had anything to do with Garmin Blue Chart but on here they all reckon they are bloody good. Hope the latest crop of Garmin GPSs are better than their old 120-126-128 series that I have used on some boats. I hate those things. Still keen to look at a Blue Chart and make my mind up myself.

[finding_time]

Peter oc
posted under a similar thread in the tackle section.

Ian

[cheno]

Smithy,

So does that mean that you cant get sped and temp up on teh sounder page on a 500f at all or does that apply only when you are using the plotter functionality as well ?

My reason for the question is that the ff50 is still discontinued in the USA which rules out sourcing a cheap ff50 from over there I can only get a 500f. I happy to buy a 500F and totally ignore the plotter setup but am not sure if i can run it in completely "sounder-only" mode and have speed and temp up on screen. I agree it sucks not having the ability to show speed and temp on the sounder page.

Cheno

[Smithy]

Cheno,

typed a reply out on the work computer but it bloody ate it. Been doing that a bit lately. Here goes again.

I have never seen the paddle wheel speed displayed on the Plot 500F. We have the triducer. Things might be better now we have NMEAed it to a Garmin and will start to use it as a combo unit. Just need some time on the water with it to find out. On the one navigation page there is suppossed to be a speed through the water but I have never seen anything come up on it. On the sounder page it must display GPS speed not paddlewheel speed. From screen shots I have seen on here from some of the guys running FF50s the windows look a bit different and we have never had speed come up. You certainly can't get speed up at the same time as temperature anyway which is one bad point.

So where is Australia getting all these FF50s from if they aren't doing them in the States? Old stock or have they started up production again and we are getting them first? Believe the FF50 is cheaper than the 500F over here. Still annoys me that you couldn't get them for a while and now you can. Had nearly accepted it but now they are back I am even more p#*sed off.