posted 09-12-2002 02:26 PM ET (US)        

Thank god I did, since trying to find where to hook in power was a little challenge, since I was assuming a single circuit box but doesn't really exist. I finally decided to to take power off of the accessory switch and ground straight to the ground bar on the bottom. My first question is, "Is this right ? "

My second question is related to that the fact that the Garmin doesn't have any connectors, just bare wires. What size/style female connector do I need to solder on the Garmin Hot wire to hook into the accessory switch or are these standard across boats?

By the way, the article regarding tranducer mounting was very useful... thanks

posted 09-13-2002 01:04 AM ET (US)            

Pay attention to fusing. A lot of accessories
come with about 18 guage wire, which needs
a small fuse (1-5 amp) to protect it. The
10 amp (or more) breaker that BW supplied is
is too big.

Blue Sea Systems has a nice fuses plus
buss bar unit that's good for this sort of
thing.

posted 09-13-2002 09:54 AM ET (US)            

DGP- I believe that the my acces. switch is the male portion of a spade connector. Do they come in various sizes or are they standard. Also what is the Ancor, a type of spade ? I'm planning on soldering the female spade to the Garmin wire and also cover with shrink wrap tubing.

Triblet... good info on the fuses. I believe my Garmin has an in-line fuse which I'll keep in place. To my suprise, the boat doesn't have a Hot bus bar, just a ground bar which is the reason why i'm wiring the Garming Hot lead to the switch....

posted 09-23-2002 04:19 PM ET (US)            

Just to place this in context, I've never used a FF before and I think I still need to tweak its vertical transducer adjustment. Given that, when the image was clear ( i.e. without noise due to bubbles: need to be adjusted lower I think ) it showed sharp detail including ground density. For the money, I think its feature set is at least comparable to others and I like the idea of a dual frequency unit.

Just with playing with it while running yesterday, the shortcut user menus are easy to invoke without going through a whole setup.

As I get it further adjusted I give the group a better report. As I passed thru some know humps as part of the test it not only accurately reported the depth but also detailed some interesting structure very clearly. An example of this was the showing up the hump but also showing a hump within the hump on the down tide side of the hump; I know where I fishing when the bass come in. Holes where clearly delineated but some of the shallow water imaging was noise until I turned down the gain.

In hind-sight, I may have gone for the combination GPS and FF for easy of installation and console space, otherwise it looks pretty good at this early point.

posted 09-24-2002 02:49 PM ET (US)            

I drilled one hole with a Fortner bit which resulted in a nice clean cut. I sized the bit to fit the broken out cabling ( the power and tranducer connector ) from the top down through and with enough play if I wanted to adjust the angle of the display. Boy was I suprised at the thichness of the top of the console... real sturdy.

Wiring it to the accesory switch and ground bus was a snap with the help of this forum directing me to the appropriate spade connector that I both crimped and then soldered. Old habits die hard.. I'm an electrical engineer, therefore I solder and never trust just a crimp since intermittent shorts are really hard to find.

AnthonyT