Hummingbird Helix Made Mobile!

I do alot of fishing in the boundary waters near my cabin and was looking for a good fishfinder to better understand what I am fishing. I picked up the Helix DI/GPS/Sonar combo, havent had it on the water yet (this weekend hopefully), but love it so far after doing some tinkering with it. I mounted the sonar to a base similar to a marcum or vexilar base, added a 12 volt battery, mounted transducer to a portable arm, and I’m ready for the canoe! Anyone else doing something like this?

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Looking good. Have you had a chance to try the gps yet?
DT

deertracker wrote:

Looking good. Have you had a chance to try the gas yet?
DT

Im thinking you are meaning GPS? I have only ran it on sim mode due to not being on the water. I should be receiving the lakemaster chip for it today. I have ran through all of the views, its a nice feature to be able to adjust screen size for sonar/gps mode. I assume you can do that on other hummingbird models, this is my first so I dont know.

Yup, gps. With all the bad talk of internal antennas it has me second guessing my Helix purchase. I have been holding off on ordering my chip until I can make up my mind. Looks like you are all set.
DT

I had not heard of the internal/external antenna discussion. Some people are having issues with internal? I’m assuming you are not able to add a puck to these internal antenna graphs?

Don’t panic yet.

Jake Hendrickson wrote:

I had not heard of the internal/external antenna discussion. Some people are having issues with internal? I’m assuming you are not able to add a puck to these internal antenna graphs?

I think this will be a sweet setup for your canoe trips.

Sure there are GPS differences, but with what your doing with it…That should be sufficient.

Ron wrote:

Don’t panic yet.

Started going through the CD Owners Manual last night. didnt get to internal antenna info yet. So many features to figure out just playing on the unit, I’m like a kid with a new toy!

Please try to report on the run time with that battery. Looks great!

FDR

Will do!

Excellent setup, but I fear you might not get great readings with the DI transducer on a static mount on a canoe that doesn’t remain stable. I could be wrong, but my buddy has a difficult time with his DI transducer and positioning on his boat, to get consistent readings.

If you find you aren’t getting satisfactory results in the canoe, I recomend getting the ice transducer. It will only be 2d, but it will work flawlessly, and you can now take that Helix ice fishing!

i have another buddy with one and he said that the gps on his helix is pretty much on point with his 899. a little deviation but not much.

I’m looking at picking up one or 2 of these. and doing something similar.

a few years back we sunk brush in a few larger borrow pits but we didn’t think to gps them at the time. the next year we did but we set them on the ice, well its tied to the river so when the river went up, the ice shifted due to wind and we found a few sets of brush on shore and have never found the others that we placed deeper. I know they are in there but where we haven’t been able to locate just punching holes every winter. SO. there is no boat access at either location so I’d have to kayak in. what I’d like to do is take a helix with SI and find all the brush that I’ve sunk and waypoint it.

everyone complains about the SI on the helix being unviewable due to the small screen but everything I’ve seen hasn’t been too bad.

Where did you pick up your Vexilar/Marcum case that you mounted it too?

jtstarvinmarvin wrote:

Where did you pick up your Vexilar/Marcum case that you mounted it too?

I got it on cabelas website. I think it was $15 or so. I also saw the base at Cabelas in Owatana about 2 weeks ago.