Hummingbird products

[Nauti]

Hi there, first post after here after reading anonymously I searched for this article before posting, so please accept ,y apologies if it has been answered previously. I could not see it.

I currently have a hummingbird wide fish finder and transducer installed on the boat I just bought. I would like to buy a hummingbird gps/chartplotter. Do I need to have another transducer installed for this? or will it work of the one that is already there seeing it is hummingbird. I really dont want to have to pull the boat out of the water if I dont have to. Thanks in advance

Rhonda

 

[Rick.]

Re: Hummingbird products

Hi there. I would recommend you contact Humminbird customer service directly. You should have your ducks in order before you call like having the exact model numbers of what you have and what you want to purchase. That way they aren't guessing about anything. I just had some dealings with their customer service and they were a breath of fresh air. Absolutely fantastic to deal with and they even gave me a new transom mount and plug for free just to get me on the right track. The contact number is available on their website. Best of luck. Rick.

 

[John_S]

Re: Hummingbird products

Depends on what wide unit you have and what unit you are getting. If the transducer has a sort of house shaped connector, (vs 2 pin) it will work to some extent. The some extent depends on the frequencies of the installed transducer. Most of the time a single beam 200kHz will still work. You will have to swap the wide connector holder in the tilt/swivel mount with the new one (assuming a 300,500, or 700 series). The wide units did not have integrated temp in the transducer, either.

The older transducers where not shielded as well as the new, so you want to get the new one on there as soon as you can. You also want to pre-test the new one, on the remote chance it is bad. You can just hang it over the side for that. Don't want to find that out next spring.

 

[Nauti]

Re: Hummingbird products

Thank you both, very much I will be sure to have all information handy when I call. So there is a bit more to this than I thought?!

I do not have a trailer for my boat yet, and was not honestly planning on buying one until winter months when I can get a better deal ( I need a fairly large trailer ) so that being said, I was hoping to get a GPS I can use without having to haul it out of the water to install

Would a hand held GPS do the same thing until I can go ahead and buy a new GPS/Plotter? I am worried about shallow water, reefs etc...and excited to explore the area, but to scared to do it without one

Any suggestions would be great! Thanks again

Rhonda

 

[Rick.]

Re: Hummingbird products

In my opinion a GPS is a great addition to boating but not so much for determining water depth. For that I would only trust your depth finder unless you have access to some top notch nav. maps that give both gps coordinates and associated depth but even then I would really be looking more at the depth finder than the map when your in shallow water. I just got a Humminbird 595 which is similar to what you mention and I haven't used the GPS for anything more than checking my speed so far but I will learn more as I go I'm sure. Before that I was using a hand held. Rick.