i still consider myself a novice fisherman, but do appreciate good equipment. i got a boat WAY overdue for electronics (currently a 20 yr old $300 setup ) and want to stay with a transom mount setup. i am pretty certain on the airmar tm185 for finding fish offshore. just need any input on multi-console? these are about the screen size i want in the $1,000 range? both quality units that work with this chirp transducer. is either hands down better, or is ther another multi-console setup i should consider?

i won’t ever use lake charts, and no immediate plans for adding radar. i have a feeling you just scratched the surface in differences. a little curious on anyone with a side by side comparison? again, i have no experience with either, i just know as a stand alone in that size and price range, these are the 2 that seem to fit with my plans.

I have a 942xs

What I like:
-dock to dock auto routing
-ability to plot on my phone and upload to plotter
-plotter gets firmware and software updates via phone app
-text messages and incoming calls show up on my plotter which is nice if I don’t hear my phone rinf
-community updates

what I don’t like:
slow compared to the Axiom I had before but the Axiom is the fastest thing out there by far.

Had a lot of different units through time. Put 2 Garmin 942 units on our new boat...first time using Garmin. Meh. Not favorably impressed. The Simrad and Lowrance units we’ve had seemed easier to use, and the mapping seemed better.

I actually have both (except it’s a 1242 and 1871F combo) on the same console.

i would take the furuno over the garmin any day. Easier interface, auto download of weather and tide forescast when connected to WiFi. The c-map charts are 10x better than the bluechart g3 which lacks a lot of details. Better auto routing. WiFi radar installed and overlays works very well. The furuno seems very high quality interface and modern. The smaller furuno renders charts faster and the fishID / sonar with airmar b75m chirp transducer is a great combo.

software updates on the furuno are a breeze and work every time. My experience.

We are currently running a Furuno 1971F with a TM185M and absolutely love the results.

We fish mainly for grouper/snapper in the gulf. Most frequently from 40-150 ft in search of hardbottom and ledges. So far, it’s been very impressive. We have been able to mark underway up to about 24-26 knots...it did take a good bit of trial and error with the transducer positioning.

I’d be happy to answer any other questions you might have. We’ve been using this combo for about 9 months now.

Here’s our set up...

So one issue we ran into with our boat was that we had thru Hull Intake scoops on both sides of the keel forward of where we wanted to mount the transducer. We ultimately elected to mount the transducer on the starboard side. What we found was that the water was not very clean off the transom in any areas. The likely culprits were the through hull scoops for the livewell (port side) and the raw water wash down (starboard side). Our decision was to remove the scoop on the starboard side and forego a raw water wash down since we have a 20 gal freshwater tank. In doing so, we replaced the thru Hull fitting with a flush mount tilted element 600 watt 50/200 transducer that is running on a dedicated Furuno FCV628.

As as far as the trial and error goes, if you look in the second picture, you can see the scars where we moved the transducer a few inches inward towards the keel. We also made many adjustments up and down to the bracket. Up and down required no more holes, just had to loosen and move the bracket. We are talking a game of centimeters here. A few centimeters down and an inch or two toward the keel made this transducer read completely different underway. At first, we couldn’t get any readings when going faster than about 8 knots. Now, we are marking bottom and bait balls in 100 feet of water while doing 25 knots. Tough to beat that, in my opinion.

If if you want a little trick for verifying a good location on the transom, have someone you trust operate the boat at a speed just enough to maintain plane. Carefully look at the water as it flows directly off your transom. You’ll notice a lot of white water and cavitation toward the chines and trim tabs. Somewhere in the middle there, you’ll see what looks like smooth, clean water with very little aeration. Mark a spot with a sharpie on the top of the transom for future reference.

Your scoops may not have any effect on yours. But, it’s something to look for if you’re losing your reading on plane. While trolling, that scoop shouldn’t cause you any issues.

For us, our main priority was reading while cruising out to our spots - in search of new spots. So, we had to clean the water getting to the transducer as much as possible.

At low or trolling speeds, the waterline will probably still be pretty high on the transom - so the transducer should stay in the water pretty well. Position isn’t as critical for low speed or idle. It’s when you’re planing that positioning makes a huge difference because that transducer has to continue to have good clean water over the face to read accurately. However, when you’re on plane, the very nature of a boat hull design is that a thin layer of aeration is passing under the hull called a boundary layer. The transducer has to extend slightly further down into the water to be just below that boundary layer to be most effective at High speeds.

paired with a furuno drs4w first watch radar and a heading sensor, yes.

Thats what I have. Heading sensor is the garmin steadycast on the nmea2k network. I also have the furuno drs4w radar paired with the 1871F unit. Cmap map card and can get radar overlay on the plotter.

The 1x71F Furuno units will only work with the first watch drs4w radar.

heading sensors are separate. If you don’t have any garmin units and purely on Furuno, the lowrance point1 gps puck worked extremely well.