Lowrance HDS 7 Structure Scan Troubleshooting

alatoon Said:
 I have recently installed a Lowrance HDS 7 Gen 2 with structure scan on a pontoon boat.  The transducer is mounted on the rear of the port side pontoon.  The unit works great sometimes but it will suddenly start scrolling to fast and reporting that the water is 5 feet deep no matter how deep the water actually is.  I can switch to 455 frequency and back to 800 and it will work sometimes.  Other times I just have to stop the boat and wait as long as 10-15 minutes before it will begin to read correctly again.  I tried turning the motor off and getting it to reset and that did not help.  I even tried resetting the unit back to factory settings and that does not work.  I had another lowrance, depth finder only, in the dash and I thought there might be some interference from it so I unhooked it but the problem did not go away.  I don't understand what makes it stop working and what makes it start working again.  It is really frustrating because when it is working it is awesome.  Has anyone else had this same problem?

alatoon Said:
 The problem does start while the engine is running.  The boat has an inboard/outboard mercruiser engine, not an outboard (does not have a trolling motor at all).  The problem will NOT go away even if I turn the engine off, turn the lowrance off, then turn the lowrance back on.  It seems like nothing I do will make it return to normal every time.  So far, it has just been a wait till it decides to work again.

sdwxman Said:
Don't mean to hijack this thread, but I have a question concerning a networked HD5 and HDS7 that maybe the Captian or Guy can answer. Seems as if the temp readout only works on one unit or the other. Not both. I get a "--" on one of the units, even after going into both and playing around with the menus and choosing the right transducer. Kind of frustrating. The sonar readouts are fine.

guywhofishes Said:

sdwxman Said:
Don't mean to hijack this thread, but I have a question concerning a networked HD5 and HDS7 that maybe the Captian or Guy can answer. Seems as if the temp readout only works on one unit or the other. Not both. I get a "--" on one of the units, even after going into both and playing around with the menus and choosing the right transducer. Kind of frustrating. The sonar readouts are fine.

I haven't pulled the trigger on 2nd HDS yet (I bought a few ONE rods on sale Saturday on impulse ).

But this is from web. I found it when searching other stuff about HDS couple weeks back. Maybe this is your fix?

1. Go to the unit that IS NOt showing the temp.
2.Press menu twice, Select Network and press Enter
3. Select Data Sources and press Enter
4.Highlight Sonar and press Enter
...5.Select Water temp and press Menu, change the scope to Local and press Enter.
6.Make sure that the Water temp description has a "-" next to it not a "+"
7.Arrow down to the selection to choose which will be HDS. Press Enter and put a blue circle into the HDS selection.

If this does not fix I can post link to entire thread.
 

alatoon Said:
 The problem is in structure scan mode for sure.  I very seldom look at the regular sonar screen so I can't say for sure about the regular sonar mode.