good piece of kit. they display more info than you think. a good book on the subject is published by fernhurst. called the fishfinder book.......funnily enough!
Do you want it for finding fish or as a depth sounder? If the latter then you can get many monochrome Fish Finders that are just as good, for far less money.
dont know why manufacturers fit a depth sounder. A FF is far better. I think for depth, then £100 black and white does great job. Seems the colour ones have better functions for indicating different water temps etc, which may/may not help you catch Nessie. Not much advantage if its just the sea bed that interests you. You can also recognise the type of seabed (sand/rock etc) but might be a better philosophy to try to avoit hitting it whatever its made of!! Theres plenty of posts about fitting the transducer, but in short, test fit it first/you can fit it inside the hull/you need undisturbed water- so away from props,steps in hull etc. Mine is fine up to 30 knts, but gets a bit unstable at 40knts. Mind you, at 40, I d be hoping the seabed is a long way beneath me!
Fitted one late last year.
On starting it up it immediatley found fish under the boat, I was quite surprised as I was in the marina at the time. So I sat for about 15-20 mins watching these fish swim in and out from under the boat,…………………….. only to find that it was in training mode.
Ok I know it I'm the Dummy
I have been looking at getting a cheap FF for use as a depth finder. They all seem to come with a transom mounted sender, how do you mount one of these?
You don't need to mount it on the transom. Transom mount, or "skimmers", work just as well thru the hull. Fit them in a tubes glassed inside the hull filled with castor oil or even vegetable oil of some sort of light thin oil! There are othe methods that are a bit more permanent. I'm not a fan of those methods for various reasons.
They show depth in a more complete picture.
They show contour trends.
They show the type of bottom.
They show fish (and Lough Ness monster type thingies.)