Humminbird 788ci

[bschmitty83]

Question for you "bird" users out there. Bought a new 788ci for the bow and have been having a few issues with the sonar. I'm getting a very weak return for the bottom even when I know it's hard and not mucky. I've played with the sensitivity and surface clutter settings, but I'm still not getting that typical hard bottom red line with a secondary return. The ducer is the 200khz/83khz dual beam plus and is mounted to the bottom of the trolling motor. I also am getting vertical lines on the screen that show up on a pretty regular basis. Any ideas or some other information I should add to clarify what the problems are? Thanks in advance.

[Transporter]

Why is it that the latest generations of bottom machines from Hummingbird and Lowrance seem to go through so many transducers? I have never owned a Hummingbird, but in Jan '09 I bought a Lowrance 522 for ice fishing, it was the first Lowrance I bought in some time,(an X70 I had on the back of a boat years ago was the last and it worked flawlessly for years, but I had installed a bronze thru-hull on that machine). The 522 worked for about 12-14 weeks and lost the sensitivity in water over 80 feet, after 3 trips back to Lowrance for warranty work over a 5 week period, each time replacing transducers, both ice and skimmer, they finally replaced the unit and transducers. It has been tested briefly but will have to wait for ice for the true test. I have primarily Raymarine and Furuno machines on several boats and have never had any of these issues, I just bought a new Furuno to replace one that the screen faded on without a transducer and the 25 year old thru hull transducer in the boat still plugged in and works fine. After considering the various models I just purchased a new color Furuno fishfinder for the back of my fishing boat, it has the same transom mount transducer as the perfectly functioning 6 year old Raymarine equipment on the helm, an Airmar, the same company that makes transducers for seemingly everyone but Hummingbird and Lowrance. Could it be that the quality of the transducers used by Hummingbird and Lowrance have slippped that far, have they changed manufacturers? There must be a reason for these issues, system setup and transducer mounting mistakes can't be made by that many people, these things have been around for quite a while.

[Ed Carlson]

Airmar does make the best ducers and your argument that a reduction of quality to save cost may factor into this outbreak of "Bad Ducers"....I think you onto something.

Airmar makes replacement ducers that fit most any brand out that now uses there "standard vendor issue" ducer. Airmar has models that will dramatically outperform the standard ducer. As with anything, an upgrade in performance tends to also mean an upgrade in cost.

Last season they released a new super ducer that by many accounts is the cats whiskers, very high performance and sensitive. The trades listed it as the most accurate ducer ever made.

For Lowrance it is listed as the TM260. Or the TM270 W, this is a wide beam high performance model. Both transom mount or can be rigged to the trolling motor.

[Mike Stark]

how do you go about updating your unit? i have the 788ci

[Nick Kuhn]

Go to Humminbird's HSOforum and register your product. Once registered it will list all the current software for your unit, including the latest firmware for your unit. Download that, and just place the file on an SD card. Put the SD card into the unit and the next time you boot it will detect the update and ask if you wish to update. Make sure your unit is at factory default settings before updating.

[Dave S]

Thanks Nick.

it looks like I will have to get my dads 768 registered online.