Wifey bought me a Lowrance 520..????

[Ridgerunnr]

For Fathers day wifey ordered me a 520..should be here tomorrow..anyone real familiar with this unit? ANy glitches I should know ? Any upgrade goodies I should run out and get ?

[LMITOUT]

I really depends on how thick and how tall the weeds are.

Think of it this way: The transducer is a speaker and the locator is your ear. If you turn the volume way up (sensitivity) with your ear right by the speaker (think shallow water) it's going to hurt your ears and probably doesn't sound real good. Turn the volume down to a reasonable level and then you can better hear what the speaker is broadcasting. Either that or back away from the speaker (deeper water).

The locator is getting confused with the loud "music" being reflected off the weeds in the shallow water and can't find the solid bottom so it starts flashing because it is confused. Turn the volume down and the music that is reflected isn't full of noise because it's not being bounced off of every piece of shrubbery growing off the bottom.

[LMITOUT]

If you are having trouble in shallow weeds trying bringing the ping speed down a bit too (works for the older LMS units and the newer HDS units too)

I forgot about mentioning that. Good tip as well.

I think some people like to open the box and use a graph without any adjusting, and that is fine too, but some of these newer units require a little more tweaking than the old Lo-K-Tor needed.

[LMITOUT]

Then there are many of these faulty units out there. Mine was good for awhile and then went south.

With any product the only feedback typically heard is the negative. I'm assuming they sold a boat-load (no pun intended) of these units so there is going to be statistically more faulty units than if they just sold 1000 of them.

Your issue is different from what others are discussing here (weedy areas) and those shallow water related complaints are well documented on the internet, but with some adjustments they can be mitigated fairly well.

[harvey lee]

How do we address the depth reading issues?

I have yet to see or read about a solution for fixing the depth issues. Thsi is also what I was told by a dude from Lowrance is that they have some big issues to resolve. There are more than just weed issues with this unit.

I understand that they sold alot of these units. The diffucult issue is trying to contact their CS department or Lowrance not responding to numerous e-mails.

[SXViper]

PerchJerker,

I am now on my second HDS 10 the first one quit working the fifth time out. It happened the second morning of a tournament, first the gps map would not load, then the GPS lost signal and would not come back. Turned it off and on a few times, reset to default settings, then after about 45 minutes it came back in, for about an hour. Couple days later was going to do the update 50 version, and the unit locked up completely, only thing that would happen is the keys would light up. In that tournament there were three boats with HDS unitsand all three boats had them fail 2, 8's and my 10. Had a boat on Mille Lacs this weekend that when you turned the HDS 7 on the screen would fade out you then had to smack it on the side to get it to come back. A week ago Sunday I was fishing wioth a friend with a HDS 7, and the GPS would freeze , the cursor would not move and the speed would flach different #'s at one point we were doing 1804 MPH. It would lock up for anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes. So there are many issues with the HDS units most not due to user error. They are on their second software update only a month into the season. I have also talked to a couple other folks with HDS units that are having problems, but not sure of the exact problems.

[PerchJerker]

That's quite a list. I know several people with them and no one has had problems like that other than the map screen freezing --- and after the software updates that problem had not resurfaced.

One guy that bought an HDS-10 from me got a bad unit, there was something wrong with a network bus or something like that, and some of his functions didn't work. Lowrance had a new HDS-10 in his hands in 2 days and he hasn't had a problem with it since.

[Fishinguy40]

I like the tips on how to tweek some of the settings on the 520c. I will have to try them. I have had mine for two years now and experience the shallow weed issues. I do agree, it seems to depend how thick the weeds are. Sometimes I can be in 6 feet of water and can't get a reading other times I can.

I have tried playing with the sensitivity and it never made a difference. Though I wasn't sure which way to go, hi or low, so I tried both. The "speaker" analogy above is excellent. Thanks for explaining this. Next time I'm out, I will have to try the sensitivity and ping speed together.

Question....if/when you find a sweet spot for heavy weeds, how does the unit read when you move out of the weeds? Do you have to continuously adjust for in the weeds and out of the weeds? When fishing, I tend to spend a lot of time on the weed edge.

When the unit does work, it works great. It's just frustrating that you pay so much money and the equipment is flawed.

[MuntzAngling]

My friend and I both have 520/522 models. He just got a new lakemaster chip with 1' contours. Also had depth contours instead of charts for parts of Lake Superior. My navionics chip is about 2-3 years old but it's nice enough. Most lakes in 5 state area with depth contours. Also the ice pack is nice. I drive around with it for navigation that way too.

[DTro]

I fished with a guy last week that has one and everything had worked fine in the past for him. He always fishes the same water and the same areas. He told me it wasn’t working right all the sudden and I said, “let me guess, it’s losing the bottom?”

Yep, we’d be going along at about trolling speed or a little faster and the reading would just go from 12FOW then blink and read 1.6 or 1.8 or 2.4. It wasn’t weedy or anything (St Croix River).

I told him to look into this further as it seems to be a known issue.

I agree with the sensitivity thing, but if nothing has changed, then it has to be some other issue.

[Sandmannd]

Yea, the loosing bottom thing is a real pain in the rear. Mine will do it when I'm going full speed as well. That erks mecause I like to watch the depth when I have the throttle open.

[Ridgerunnr]

well over the weekend got a chance to play with the new locator...no problems thanks to you guys...tuned the sensitivity and upper level readings and voila...sweet..talk about being able to see the structure etc!! I leave the sensitivity bar running on top, that way I can tune as needed. In 3 fow i was still getting good sign but had to tune the sensitivity WAY down to get it...I dodnt have to play with the ping speed. The unit so far looks good, just have to keep tuning and tweaking but so far so good. Hopefully no problems arise. I installed the Lake Master chip but not sure its working..??? WHen i go to navigation it pulls up say Birch lake andhad bay names etc but pretty crappy contour stuff.....is it supposed to be more detailed????

[ozzie]

if it has depth of a lake then it is working.....most lake the contours and the depths are spot on...other lakes can be a little off

[Sandmannd]

Glad to hear you like the unit. Like I said, they can be nice, but can be a pain sometimes. The Lakemaster won't show the contour on all lakes.

[LMITOUT]

The unit has built-in maps so you may or may not be looking at the Lakemaster chip. One way to tell is to scroll over to a high definition lake such as Mille Lacs and you'll know right away if you're looking at a map from the chip or the built-in map because the built-in map is the low quality version. I believe the LakeMaster has 1' contours of Mille Lacs if I'm not mistaken. You'll see the difference right away.

Not all the maps on the Lakemaster chip are high definition and are essentially the same map you can find on the DNR HSOforum. Birch may be one of those.

Another way to know is you'll see a little icon flashing on the bottom corner of the screen that looks like a SD card. This shows that the unit is accessing data from the chip. It'll do this when you boot up and then anytime you zoom in or out or pan around the screen. Some say the Lakemaster is plug and play, but I had to manually configure the 520 to read the chip which wasn't a big deal...just a setting had to be changed.

[gregg52]

you know you hafta zoom in and out on those contours

start out a mile or so then start zommin as you aproach the area u want to fish of coarse all depends on lake you are

the lake should come automatically

can be a little confusing which way to turn to get to where u want at forst but you will get use to it

the chip is the greatest thing since the green box in my opinion

[Sandmannd]

Some say the Lakemaster is plug and play, but I had to manually configure the 520 to read the chip which wasn't a big deal...just a setting had to be changed.

Yep, had to configure mine to read the chip as well. Takes five minutes, but I would make sure it's set to read it.

[Ridgerunnr]

Headin back up tonight for fishin, If i need to configure the unit to read the chip how is that done?

[Ridgerunnr]

still not sure its reading the chip...no small icons or anything on screeen when using it

[PerchJerker]

You should not have to configure anything to read a LM card, they are plug-n-play. If you're not sure it's working, put your LM card in the unit, got to the map page and move the cursor to Lake Mille Lacs, zoom in and you should see 1 foot contours. If you do, then the card is working. If not, then somewhere in the GPS Setup menus are an option to select the map data, that would be the next thing to check.

[LMITOUT]

I had to configure my 520 manually. With the screen on the map (not the sonar), hit the menu key and then select "map data". Make sure the map type is "lowrance".

The only icon you'll see on the screen is when the unit is powering up as well as when you're scrolling around on the map screen or zooming in or out. It will flash rapidly and you have to be watching to see it. The icon is not displayed all the time, just when the unit is accessing the chip and acquiring the data off of it.

I apologize for not seeing your question last Thursday. I must have missed it.