NEED HELP

[IceJohn]

I cant seam to get my vex to pickup my jigs.I am not good with electic thing.Need someone to show how to tune it in.Ilive in Hawkeye orI can meet up with you. thanks IceJohn

[Slab Daddy]

IJ- Try this to see if it helps. Make sure the battery is fully charged. Put you jig down about 6 feet under the transducer. While jigging it up and down, adjust the gain up or down till you see the movement. Dont worry about the bottom or any other signals till you see the jig line moving. Once that is picked up all other signals should be true. Goodluck.

[icedog]

IceJohn-I see you are north of W'loo. I am in the CR area. Don't know when I will be out again in that part of the state...maybe someone in your area will read this and offer a hand?
You can tell if the unit is working right in the comfort of your house. Here is what I would do:
1-Over a hard floor (vinyl, cement, etc), set up the unit with the ducer hanging about 3ft above the hard surface.
2-Turn on the unit.
3-Should see the red "zero" mark at the top of the dial and hear the motor spin up if it is working. If this doesn't happen check your battery, connections or maybe you have a dead unit.
4-Turn the gain button up till you see a flash on the dial at about 5-8 feet. If you turn the gain up all the way and no signal appears then you may have a problem with:
A) transducer could be bad, cord could be cut or broken internally or simply not plugged in? Borrow a friends ducer or take your unit to a tackle store and ask to switch ducers for a minute to try the same thing there. If a new ducer shows a mark on the dial then your ducer is bad and needs to be replaced.**I also have had transducers go bad. If you bang them hard against something, drop them, or with age, they can stop working properly. I had one ducer that would show bottom, but would not show my jig or anything in between. When you have the unit on the bench and if it does show the bottom(floor) mark, put something solid between the bottom of the ducer and the floor. The object should also show up on the dial at a different depth than the floor mark..now move the object up and down..the mark on the dial should move in sync with the object. If it doesn't show up the ducer is probably bad.
Unit "power head" could be bad. If the ducer swap doesn't produce a signal and the unit has a red "zero" mark and motor spins up, then something inside the unit has probably given up it's little life for that last fish!
Call Vexilar at 612-884-5291 and get directions on sending the unit in.
I hate it when stuff stops working!
dogonthinice

[This message has been edited by icedog (edited 01-10-2003).]

[Bodyman]

Icejohn, My brother just got a FL18 and was having the same problem. He had to turn his gain up to 4-5 to see his jig in 8' of water. I have had a fl-8 for 3 years now and never had to turn it up over 1 for most panfish jigs. He did the floor test for the ducer and that checked out. We switched ducers and his worked just fine on my machine and my ducer on his was the same thing, had to turn the gain up to 5 to see the jig. He called Vexlar they told him they had to calibrate the gain. He sent it in last week got it back yesterday. We'll find out this weekend if it fixed his problem. If you know someone that has another vex try switching the ducers and see if that fixes your problem. If not send it into vexlar.

Fishing is Life.

[icedog]

Bodyman-your friend didn't have his unit set on the "low power" setting did he? Those FL-18's have so many features you really have to check your settings to see what the heck is going on. I re-watched the video that came with mine before we had ice, just to be sure I remembered all the possible settings!!! (OK, could be Oldtimers setting in too!!)
There could be another issue with the complaint of the gain setting being higher than you would normally expect. I found many years ago that my old Hondex FL-8 was not registering my jig at Rathbun in 15' of water. Had to turn my gain clear up to max to see it. Thought I had a problem with my unit till I examined the water in my ice hole more closely...the water was very very dirty...run off had clouded it and the mud/silt particles in the water were acting like filters blocking the sonar signal-not allowing it to penetrate the cloud. Any time this "higher than normal gain thing" happens, check the water clarity.
doggiedoo

[Guest]

doggiedooo
had this very thing happen at small crappie lake last monday in one area.
thought my transducer was going bad till moved.
sledman

[Bodyman]

Icedog, It's my brothers FL18 and he used it quite a bit and at different locations and no change. He looked at the video over a few times to. I'm pretty sure he had it set right. I'll find out saturday if the fix from vexlar helped. We're hitting the mississppi backwaters for crappies and gills.

Fishing Is Life.