GC 24 testing new sounder

[Spaniard_King]

Was hopin for some decent weather to go wide and test my new FCV620. Left home ar 4:12am with 5 knots southerly blowin (thinkin the weather was good enuff to go wide) Lauched at Tweed and made it through the bar by 5 am to be confronted by a northerly #. radioed the local VMR and they informed me the wind swung at 4:30 am to be a 12knot northerly...bugga

Decided to go to Kirra and get some livies anyway, arrived there to an absolute clean sounder screen #and a lot of slop due to the northerly. Made a quick decision that we wanted to see somethin on the new sounder so we made course for the 36's NE of Tweed. Making way of only 15-20klm/hr it took a while before we came up on the 36's which also looked barron #Was starting to think, does this sounder work or what #. The boys agreed we should continue to the 50's so off we went at a leisurly pace, as we made our way we came across some nice little humps holding a few fish so the confidence was starting to build.

Arrived on the 50's on my favourite spot and imediately came up on good shows of fish. the boys dropped straight on to the pearlies. I just played with the sounder and took the pics #

Fished 280ft - 330ft boating a nice sambo a tusky and several pearlies.The conditions did improve as the day went on.

I will post a few sounder picks below and if any of the boys who run the coloured sounders would like to comment on the readings(any tips on improving the images) I would appreciate it

Garry

[Spaniard_King]

sounder1

[Spaniard_King]

2

[Spaniard_King]

3

[Spaniard_King]

last

[reef_king]

nice ambo, i used to run a FCV-582 and currently own a JRC FF50 and am thinking about upgrading to a FCV-585. When we used to use the furuno we could tweak the sounder to pick fish anywere and away from the reef. 9 times out of 10 you could tell the fish you were going to catch off the spot before you dropped. Im no expert or have any expereince with the new sounder but it looks like there is alot of static/clutter/interference on the screen, are you running other sounders/electrical items and what transducer set-up are you using.

Im sure your sounder will increase you catch rate and after a while of using it you will get the hang of how different species show up.Thanks for sharing your pics/info on the sounder it looks great.

cheers ty,

[Spaniard_King]

hi reef king

If I droped the gain, the picture would clear up but I would loose the show of fish?? you can actually see my gain settings at the top of the screen

all other functions were off

Interference
Colour erase
clutter
white line
white marker??(wtf is this)
TVG ??

However smoothing was on

cheers

Garry

[cyclone2]

Garry good to see you got to try the sounder out although ordinary conditions I took mine for a run up the cairns inlet as the outside conditions are still crap up here. In regaurd to Reefkings comments I did read an article in a mag on the sounder that had a good tip that seems to work. Set clutter at zero then turn gain up till noise is displayed then go back in and increase clutter control mine went up to about 30% till noise disapears. Then infinate control can be acheived via the gain knob this gave a very clear screen but still displayed anything in the way of fish on mine. Give it a go in simulator mode and you will see what I mean. Andrew. AKA cyclone

[kingcobe]

Awesome fish

[Burley_Boy]

Interesting to se the temp Garry. It was 21deg on the 24's and 24deg on the 50's
Nice unit by the way!

[Spaniard_King]

BB the temp may not be exactly correct as I have not calibrated it yet

cheers

Garry

[dan099]

HI MATE WAT WAS IT SET ON 50 OR 200

FROM MY EXPERIENCE THE CLUTTER U SEA IS ELECTRICAL INTERFEARENCE AS IT IS LINES GOING TOP TO BOTTOM THIS IS NORMALY CAUSED FROM A WEEK EARTH

[Spaniard_King]

Hi Dan099,

definately not a weak earth, I made doubly sure of all connections even soldering an extra wire to each to make them thicker so as to screw down hard on them when they were attched to the buz bars ;)

If you read my posts above I have not touched any of the so called functions to enhance the image, I was hoping for someone to point me down the track of where to start with these. Looks like I will be starting with the clutter

cheers

Garry

[dan099]

IT IS SOME TYPE OF NOISE INTEFERENCE FROM ANOTHER PEICE OF EQUIPMENT NEAR BY
HOW CLOSE TO YOUR MOTOR DOES YOUR TRANSDUCER CABLE RUN ?
ELECTRICAL INTEFERENCE SHOWS IT SELF AS LINES FROM TOP TO BOTTOM OF SCREEN
I THINK THOSE UNITS HAVE A NOISE LIMITER AND A CLUTTER ADJUSTMENT TRY THE NOISE LIMITER 1 OR 2 SETTINGS HIGHER AS THIS WILL GET RID OF MOST WEEK ECHOS

[Spaniard_King]

I spent a hour or so this afternoon playin with the sounder in demo mode, I recon I have the settings near perfect, will be trying them out this Sat out around the same ground.

Will post some more pics along with the report

Garry

[dan099]

make sure u leave some fish for the rest of us poor fisherman with antique equipment

cant wait to see more pics of fish and sounder

[finding_time]

nice ambo, i used to run a FCV-582 and currently own a JRC FF50 and am thinking about upgrading to a FCV-585. When we used to use the furuno we could tweak the sounder to pick fish anywere and away from the reef. 9 times out of 10 you could tell the fish you were going to catch off the spot before you dropped. Im no expert or have any expereince with the new sounder but it looks like there is alot of static/clutter/interference on the screen, are you running other sounders/electrical items and what transducer set-up are you using.

Im sure your sounder will increase you catch rate and after a while of using it you will get the hang of how different species show up.Thanks for sharing your pics/info on the sounder it looks great.

cheers ty,



Giday Ty

Mate i have been reading your comments on the FF50 with interest and i cant help wondering if there isn't something dodgee with your transducer. I run a ff50 myself and have no trouble identifying the species im seeing on the screen once i have learnt how they appear.

The reason i question your transducer is that i have just spent a week at 1770 fishing from a boat that runs a plot 500 and it's performance was aweful and no matter if the boat was stopped ,travelling or had the engine off you could not get the images correct, i have no doubt that it's transducer is stuffed as i linked up my unit to his transducer and it was still aweful. Anyway just something to consider.

Cheers Ian

[StevenM]

Garry,

white marker is where you select in your case the white marker to show red or hardest colour in white, this then allows you to see or descriminate fish sitting on the bottom.

TVG...nfi

As far as the lines think pretty normal seing the gain is between 7.9 and 8.4, pretty tipical for the depth you are working.

try setting the Noise Limiter to 1 and clutter to about 8-9

cheers

Steven

[Spaniard_King]

Hi Steven,

Thanks for your imput

Was reading the manual again ::) and get this TVG compensates for propagation attenuation of the ultrasonic waves. It does this by equalizing echo presentation so that fish schools of the same size appear in the same density in both shallow and deep waters :-/ only works when gain is in manual.

Thanks for the white line stuff... I find switching to bottom lock discriminates fish from the bottom real well.

here is a pic of the bait schools we were loading up after our trip out wide Sat mornin which ended up a non event....you can see the distance travelled on the screen

cheers

Garry

[StevenM]

Garry,

thats a lot of miles for no fish,

see you are using all the features and measuring depth to the first school, I think you like your new toy

where are these bait grounds and what were they if you dont mind

just for input into the memory bank, I use a 600L and after switching to colour its a beautiful world, the B&W brigade dont know what they are missing.

Cheers

Steven

[Spaniard_King]

Hi Steven,

They were just Yakkas, Down the Tweed pumping Jetty ;)

Garry

[cyclone]

Garry I took my boat out for a run for the first time since fitting the new sounder today and I love it, used the bottom lock all day even while on the move looking for country It does a great job seperating fish sitting hard on the bottom and the picture was clear as a bell. It also drew a nice clear picture up to 26knts which was the fastest I got to today. These pics are nannys and red emperor holding right on the bottom in 60+ mtrs. of water. Sorry about the quality compared to your brilliant pics. Andrew.

[cyclone]

Another

[Spaniard_King]

Andrew,


good to see some pics from someone else ;) good shows too. What transducer are you using??

What background did you like the best.. I see you tried at least 2 colours

cheers

Garry

[cyclone]

Garry trasducer is don't quote me transom mount pt65 I think. settled on the white b/ground as the sun got higher blue or black for night time my daughter thinks the blue is very pretty! You gotta love that bottom lock thingy. My old sounder could never descriminate between bottom and fish in the spot where these photos were taken, but this new unit clearly picks them out. I'm starting to think I made the right choice. Andrew.

[StevenM]

Your right with white being the best colour during the day. Must admit I have swaped to blue at night as well...been a while since I have been out at night but.

BTW..thanks for the info Garry

cheers

Steven

[snappa]

i can fire some q's at ya
when i get out and use my new 620 ...


any hints before i get out ... :)

i was told to run in auto because it adjust to the best settings....

[Spaniard_King]

Snappa,

you can see my settings above
Gain manual (play with it till you get screen filling up and back off)
range Auto
Marker ZZoom (use up and down arrows to shift zoom area or change to botom zoom for auto zoom)
%5 colour erase
interference on low
tvg on medium
smoothing ON

use screen width to set how you like it

cheers

Garry

[snappa]

garry



what speed on the display ..???

[Spaniard_King]

Snappa.. slow it down 1 from the base setting not sure if its 1/2 or 2/1 ::)

Garry

[snappa]

bump it beats sitting in the boat reading about what to do ....as i was today

i have a lot to learn ...


bloody strippped the screws holding the airmar... :-?

[rockape]

TVG from my understanding is TIME VARIED GAIN.

It means that you can adjust the time (depth) that the manual gain setting is achieved. Basically if you're in deep water and you have to have the gain set fairly high to get a good pic, then a high TVG setting will allow you to use a lot of gain and basically nullify all the interference/clutter in the midwater and concentrate the gain on the bottom.

Say you're in 200m of water and the echo takes 6 units of time to reach the bottom, a low setting will focus the gain in the earlier stage, medium in the middle and high towards the end of the ping.

Hope this is correct, feel free to correct me if it's totally wrong.