Sonar/GPS Help

[ocf1]

My grand father recently purchased a HDS 5 System on his boat and I have been put in charge of figuring it out. I understand some of it but I am still trying to figure some sonar things out

1. The sonar will not read the bottom in weeds, instead it will have vertical lines. I have done some research on this but have come up with nothing.

2. When it first came it had maps preloaded, but now they are not there, was it just like a month trial and I need to purchase a something now?

3. How can you tell if there is a hard bottom on the sonar?

Thanks, any help is greatly appreciated.

[PerchJerker]

Make sure you have the latest software updates in the unit, they are on the Lowrance web site.

Also make sure you have the right transducer selected in the installation menu (probably an HST-WSBL if it's a skimmer trandsducer), make sure you have it on 200 kHz, and make sure you have it in shallow water mode. Ater that try tweaking your ping speed, sensitivity and colorline. I bumped my colorline and my ping speed up a bit from the auto settings.

Hard bottom shows as brighter colors than soft bottom, it's easier to see this in manual sensitivity mode than auto sensitivity mode.

The base map should still be there, you can select either Lowrance or Navionics as your map view.

[ocf1]

Thanks PerchJerker,

Is there a good place to get info on how to do an update?

[PerchJerker]

Is there a good place to get info on how to do an update?

There's directions on the Lowrance HSOforum --- from there you download the update to a blank SD card, then put the SD card in your HDS and power it up and it automatically updates the software. Let me know if you need more help, we've done updates for a bunch of people