SOUNDERS have made huge technological
advancements in recent years. Modern
sounders make a boat fisho’s job of locating
fish easier than ever. One such unit is
Lowrance’s Elite 7 CHIRP Fishfinder/
Chartplotter. I’ve been testing out this new
colour unit on my 3.9m Quintrex Hornet over
the past few months. Replacing the Quinnie’s
previous old tech sounder with the Elite 7 has
been like going from black & white TV to a
f lat screen plasma. It’s been some step up!
After installing the unit’s supplied HDI
(Hybrid Dual Imaging) 83/200khz
transducer, which combines Lowrance’s
HDS BroadBand technology with
DownScan and is capable of sounding to
1000 feet, it was just a matter of hooking 12
volts to the head unit and sorting out amount. Being a tiller steer tinny, I wanted
the set to be viewable from my seated
position and swivel capable for viewing
from around the boat. At 7” wide its
mounting bracket wasn’t easily fitted
directly to the Quinnie’s gunwales due to its
grab rails. To solve this I fitted the sounder
bracket to a R AM swivel mount, which
works well for manoeuvring the unit for
viewing from other positions. Powering the
unit on sees it go into start-up mode,
similar to a modern computer. The first
time you turn the unit on it gives you the
option of using a Setup Wizard or using
your own settings. Here you can set the unit
up to operate via the chosen transducer.
With the unit powered, you have the option
of eight display views via the Pages menu. Youcan run full screen displays for all Pages- Sounder (sonar), Chart (GPS Plotter);
Downscan; Steer, or combos of them, as well
as a three panel multi-screen. My preference
has usually been to run with the sonar/chart
display which I alternate with full displays of
each when needed. I really like the Pages
menu for the speed at which you can f lick
through the various displays – it’s a great
feature of Lowrance units in general.
This being the first CHIRP sounder I’ve
spent much time with, the improvement in
screen definition and clarity is quite
impressive. As Lowrance claims, underwater
targets appear more separated and defined
and, for mine, there’s a lot less screen clutter.
The image just appears sharper in comparison
to “non-CHIRP” units I’ve used.
The 83/200khz HDI transducer supports
Medium/High CHIRP; the optional
50/200khz HDI transducer supports Low/
High CHIRP. According to the user manual,
Low CHIRP is best for deep water (with low
resolution imagery), Medium offers better
depth penetration than High with minimal
loss of target separation; High CHIRP is best
for shallow water use, giving better resolution
than Medium. The unit came pre-set to High
CHIRP, which can be changed via Frequency
in the menu. I’ve found High a good overall
setting for waters I often frequent as they tend
to be, on average, less than 20m (60ft) deep.
Users can also run a split screen mode with
both Med and High CHIRP settings with the
83/200khz transducer.
Lowrance’s latest colour combo unit has a host of high-tech
features to help fishos find fish. Mick Fletoridis reports.
Join The CHIRP Set
REVIEWED
(^100) FEBRUARY 2015