I added on a Sonarhub and LSS-2 tranducer to my HDS-5 with 83/200 tranducer. I installed the LSS-2 about 6 inches away from the 83/200 and the top of it is about even with the bottom of the 83/200 if you look from the side. There isn’t much slope on the back of my boat on the bottom of the transom, so to keep the LSS-2 within 12″ of the 83/200 and low enough doesn’t give a lot of options.
Anyway, the structurescan side imaging on 800khz seems to work, I can see weeds and the lake bottom clearly, but I drove right by my dock with 6 large cedar pilings under it and didn’t see anything on the screen, just what looks like a standard lake bottom with some weeds. So then I drove about 2-3 feet away from a 15+ foot log that was sticking out of the water and angled down into the bottom of the lake and again the log didn’t show up. Downscan seems to show everything, you can see the bottom, weeds, other stuff (not real sure how to interpret the screen yet), but nothing I’d say is a fish or other things I’d expect to see. Then I drove over several anchored buoys in the lake, two of which were mine with cinder block anchors and didn’t see those on the screen either. I know the lake has stumps all over, I’ve seen them on clear days, and those didn’t seem to show up either. Also there’s some dots on the screen here and there, usually in line vertically with weeds, but nothing that’s clearly a fish like I’ve seen in screenshots.
Then to make matters worse, I was looking forward to using chirp, which lowrance said I can do with my 83/200 and the Sonarhub, but not at the same time as structurescan. They were right, but high or medium chirp just seems to show a bunch of crap. I can see what I guess are weeds, and the bottom. If I turn on fish ID it marks all kinds of stuff a fish, but with that off it just looks like a bunch of weird black blocks from an old 8 bit game console mixed in with weeds from the bottom. I spent 4 hours driving around the lake testing settings and didn’t see a single “arch”, but with “fish ID beep” on, it was beeping all over. The lake is a man-made lake with a peat bottom in most places, lots of weeds this time of year (until the weed puller starts making a dent), and kind of a greenish hue to the water. It’s not the clearest water due to the peat, but it’s a lot cleaner than swamp water. You can see the bottom on clear days.
Finally, when I first hooked it all up the first thing I tried was side imaging on the shallow water setting (the lake is only about 16 feet deep max). It worked fine, I drove around trying to see something interesting and didn’t. I docked and went back out about an hour later, turned on the HDS and the screen says “STOPPED”, which apparently meant the sonar was stopped since it was auto-checked on the menu. I spent over an hour screwging around with options only to find out it was the shallow water setting. Soon as I changed to any other option it works fine. How did it work the first time on shallow water setting and why doesn’t it work but everything else does?
If anyone has any tips on where to start checking for solutions I’d appreciate it. The only thing I can think is maybe the transducers are conflicting, but if that’s the case why does side imaging and down imaging appear to work fine? Also my transom isn’t exactly square so the LSS-2 is angled slightly to the right, could that cause it to appear to be functioning?