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A quick question for airmar 270W owners...I have a lowrance 113lcxHD and I am planning on targeting the upper 200 ft. of the water column while tuna fishing, so the 270W is my first choice. However, I will be fishing in 3,000 ft of water, and when my machine looses contact with the bottom I get nothing but vertical lines on the screen. In your opinion, will the 270W be able to detect the bottom in 3,00 ft of water? I don't care about bottom detail b/c I will never be looking at the bottom, I just need to ensure that the transducer will be able to pick up the bottom. I've done searches on THT from past posts and from what I can tell this question has never really been addressed. I really appreciate any information I can get, even if it's only speculation.
3000 ft is pretty deep, expecting to stay in contact at trolling speed with a 113 is pretty optimistic. My 111chd wouldn't do it. If you're considering spending big bucks on that transducer just to scan the upper water column for tuna and bait you might be better off picking up a broadband sounder add-on box for your 113 and run a wide angle Lowrance skimmer. Or jump all the way to an HDS 10 and get the broadband and the structurescan, then you'll really see what is around the boat. I love mine
I recently added the 270W to my Garmin 4212. The garmin is known as a weak sonar unit and since I am committed to it (big hole in the dash it fills) I went with the 270 to help spot fish in the upper couple hundred feet. Since it has a wide angle (25) for both frequencies I do not think it is a good choice for finding bottom deep. I know my setup gets shaky at 600ft. Jeez, I sure hope garmin gives me a way to up the sonar performance of this thing.
Not much help comparing to your Lowrance, but the transducer change did not really give me more depth reading over the base POS transom mount.
You shouldn't need to see bottom at any depth in order for your FF to "see" the top of the water column you specify. Not familiar with the Lowrance you mention, but maybe it's a settings issue. My flimsy DSX600 with a transom mount 500w ducer can easily pick up bait schools down to ~150ft when trolling 6-7 knots in 3000-3500ft of water. I simply set the range to 200ft.
The 270W is supposed to be the top choice for this purpose, due to its wide beam angle (25 deg), but again, you don't need to be able to reach the bottom to do it. I would check the FF settings.
I use my 582 Furuno just as you use yours, however being a 500W sounder it can barely get a return in 2000'. When we get in 6000' there is no way that the bottom has any to do with my little unit. Still works the same for the top 150'. You should be manually setting your range to 200' if that is the water you want to see. If you let the sounder go to max range returns in the top 200 feet would be too small to notice. The vertical lines are a puzzle to me.
Thanks for all the responses. As far as manual settings go, that's what I'm currently doing. I set the range to 0-200 feet, but for some reason if the unit can't pick up the bottom then all i get is vertical lines, regardless of what the screen is zoomed in to.
Chaps, I do have the BBS, and it didn't seem to help the depth. With the boat stopped, and sometimes at an idle, I can pick up the bottom at 3,000 feet, even before the BBS, and that is with the std. skimmer transducer, but once I get above an idle I loose contact with the sea floor and everything goes back to lines. Oh well, I asked about this here once before, but I worded my question in an unproductive way and didn't really get my point across. Right now I'm trying to decide whether to go with the TM260 or the TM270W. I really want the coverage of the 270, but if I have a better chance of reaching the bottom with the 260, than that's probably how I'll go. Anyone have any thoughts on the 260 hitting the bottom?
Regulator29 on this website had the same transducer and used it to do what you are trying, you may try looking him up and sending him a PM.
Also you may try running your question by Jim at BOE. He may have some advice.
I have used a 1kw B260 with the Furuno Navnet VX2 and bff1 black box and it will pick up bottom trolling down to 1000'. Sorry I can't answer your question better but try the above guys I mentioned.
I put the SS270 wide on my boat this past fall it is connected to NavNet vx2 and BB1, have not been offshore with it yet, but did get to see how well it worked for seeing the easy fish (rockfish & blues). Prior to this I had the flush mount SS264 200 wide (which is basically the same transducer as the 270 without the 50kHz transducer and being flush mount) on my 23 Reg connected to a C80 & DMS250, this setup was great for locating bait & tuna. I would set my zoom so that I would look at the top 30 fathoms. Depending on water conditions I would lose bottom from 100-200 fathoms. I think the 50kHz wide on my 270 will do much better though. PM me if you want more info, but bottom line is that the 264 wide performance was best I’ve seen in a 1000watt transducer for my style of fishing and that is why I went with the 270 wide over the 260 when I upgraded the transducer on my new 29Reg. Jig fishing for BFT tuna with the 264 wide was just plain sick … see fish … see jig go down past fish … start jigging … hold on …
Airmar 270W 
