I purchased an Ice Helix 7 CHRIP GPS G3N AS A couple of weeks ago. I remember reading somewhere in the directions that the battery should only be connected when fishing as the battery can discharge. Whether that meant just over time or if there is a drain on the battery while it’s off. I took it as there is some sort of drain other than time on the battery.
It will be plugged in 24/7. Unless, of course, I go fishing.
As to the case zipper turning the unit on, I think that is what happened to me after the first time I used it. I noticed the charge light hadn’t turned green in a days worth of charging. I reconnected the charger and next day still no joy on a green charge light. That’s when I opened the front of the case and the unit was on.
Also somewhere in the instructions I had read the sonar should never be used when the transducer is out of the water as it may cause damage to the transducer. When I saw the screen on and realized it had been on for two days I got kinda grumpy thinking I had ruined my first fish finder.
A grumpy yet frantic call to Humminbird customer service to find out if my unit was toast or not would have gone better if I had calmed down and listened. The agent that helped me said something about transducers and air and something else but I didn’t listen. In my mind I was thinking of a way to test the unit without driving to the lake and drilling a hole.
I remembered the 5 gallon buckets in the garage. Would it work in a bucket? Only one way to find out. I brought a bucket into the kitchen ignoring the look of death I was getting from the wife. The look only intensified when I started filling the bucket with the sink sprayer. I don’t know what the wife was so upset about, most of the water went in the bucket and I stopped before I over flowed it.
I dropped the transducer in the bucket, powered on the unit and held my breath. I know 5 gallon buckets are deep, but not the 9 feet deep the unit was telling me. I adjusted the gain, manual depth at the lowest I could make it, fiddled with the zoom and it still indicated the bucket was 5 feet deep.
This did not make me feel any better so I decided I needed to go fishing to test the unit in deeper water, oh darn. The unit seemed to work OK at the lake. This was only my second time trying to use a fish finder of any kind let alone a unit with way more options than the smartphone I still can’t figure out.
I felt better when the depths it was indicting matched a state map I had printed off. I quit fishing and just fiddled with the until I became so confused I didn’t know which part went in the water and which part I was supposed to look at.
I still wasn’t 100% sure it was working as it should so I decide another call to customer service might help me out. This call went much better because I was neither grumpy nor frantic. The agent told me if the self test completed with out errors and the self test screen indicated a transducer was hooked up then all was well.
I was a happy guy. The next time I went out after an extensive review of the instruction went much better. I actually marked a couple of fish. I didn’t catch any but seeing the machine work as it should was a relief.
Headed out to the hard water again tomorrow. My goal is to get a bite. Then the next time out my goal will be to actually catch a fish.
There is a first time for everything.
