help lowrance hds7

[walleyemaster]

hi guys im new here..hope i can get some help..i have an aluminum 19 foot boat its a harbercraft and i have recently bought a lowrance hds7 unit..i had a lowrance x85 previouse to the new unit...i took the boat out today to try my new hds7 and my transducer was not working properly..it was not working and then working..my screen was all over the place..the only thing i have for electronics on my boat is the fish finder and downriggers which i did not even have on the boat....could this be some sort of interference..all i had on my screen was straight vertical lines and at some points during the day it was working fine..sometimes when i was drifting it started to work with engine off and sometimes it would start to work when i was moving...i cant tell you how dissapointed i was..can anyone tell me if there could be some kind of interference with my set up??? i have a walk through window and the unit sits on my my dash, attached to the bracket it came with...

[walleyemaster]

Originally Posted by walleyemaster

hi guys im new here..hope i can get some help..i have an aluminum 19 foot boat its a harbercraft and i have recently bought a lowrance hds7 unit..i had a lowrance x85 previouse to the new unit...i took the boat out today to try my new hds7 and my transducer was not working properly..it was not working and then working..my screen was all over the place..the only thing i have for electronics on my boat is the fish finder and downriggers which i did not even have on the boat....could this be some sort of interference..all i had on my screen was straight vertical lines and at some points during the day it was working fine..sometimes when i was drifting it started to work with engine off and sometimes it would start to work when i was moving...i cant tell you how dissapointed i was..can anyone tell me if there could be some kind of interference with my set up??? I have a walk through window and the unit sits on my my dash, attached to the bracket it came with...

help

[mucho gusto]

I had the same problem only to find that the cable was loosely connected. It also happens in less than a foot of water.

[walleyemaster]

Originally Posted by mucho gusto

I had the same problem only to find that the cable was loosely connected. It also happens in less than a foot of water.

i checked the connection it was fine and i was in water that was 15-20 feet deep

[STEPHENHAM]

Is this a second unit, IE is the old unit still operational?

[bamaboy473]

My guess is a connection...or lack of. Spastic operation can be a broken wire or corroded on the inside. Look at the power and the ground cables/wires and look for any green dust.
To be sure, take an old lamp cord and fashion brand new wiring from the fuse to the unit and see whether anything changes.

Also, it's possible that the unit isn't getting enough voltage. Clip a voltmeter between the power and the unit and keep looking at it to see what's changing.

[walleyemaster]

the boat is new its an 06 year..the wires under the boat seem to be new..do you think that i should attach the power wire directly to the battery and skip the switch on my dash??? i went were i bought the unit and the guy says to me that its interference or the transducer is not working..i told him that the unit came out of the box..the transducer and the power wire are all new and the fishfinder is new...is there a test i can do to see if its some sort of interference causing the problem without taking the boat out into the lake?????

[abbor]

I know one guy having serious interference problems with a FCV-620 in an aluminium boat. He solved the probelem by connecting the extra shield wire of the FCV to the aluminum hull.. HDS don't have a seperate shield wire, but connetcting battery neagitve to the hull could be an idea.

I've had problem swith diagonal lines with dot's in between on my HDS-5. I temorary solved the problem by setting Noise Reduction to Medium. Plan to investigate this further the coming weekend. I had previously a LMS-525C connected using the same power cable without any noise problems.

[pastaman1234]

I have played with many hds units that were on display in various stores. While messing with the settings in simulator ALL of them started to display annoying vertical lines on the sonar. I had to shut the units down and restart them to make it go away. Just a guess but i bet there is nothing that you can do (as long as you installed it the right way) and i smell an update coming in the future to cure this. Might be a software glitch!! Like i said.......just a guess!!

[walleyemaster]

maybe because the boat i have is 100% aluminum may be a factor..this boat is a harbercraft made in british columbia..it is all aluminum even the dash is aluminum..the console is welded aluminum..th only part of the boat with different material than aluminum is the marine grade vynle floor...do you think this is a major cause of my interference???? thinking back now i do recall my x85 from lowrance acting up sometimes...is it the new boat???maybe this boat causes alot of interference..is it even possible???

[b04747]

If Navico has a local rep you can probably get him to take a look.