hummingbird 987C ?

[Unregistered]

987c Si sidescan

it has been a while since anyone posted but here are a few scans for your viewing pleasure.
sorry the site is very simple I'll work on it.
note the whole site is like 8.5 meg and in real life each image is a 1.2 meg bitmap each so they do lose something in the conversion.
these were also shot on rivers with a 3-4 mph currant with boils and back eddys just to make it fun, the lake shots had some 1 foot waves to make getting good scans of my dive spots a joy......not!

http://webpages.charter.net/bhamptonkc7mrp/

brad

[Unregistered]

confused about europe prizing of the 987

Hello,
I´d like to buy a hummingbird 987 (I´m comming from germany), so I searched the internet for dealers selling the 987. What I saw was really surprising... or should I say surprizing ;-)
While you get the thing in US shops starting somwhere arround 1600 $ you get it in Germany starting at 2950 Euro (that is more than double the prize).
They say it is a special europe version with metric system and so on.
Does anyone know the real differences between the US and Europe version.
Is there a difference at all (with the exception of the prize)?
Does anyone know a europe dealer that offers the 987 for a reasonable prize?

thanks
Sven ([email protected])

[Unregistered]

humminbird 987c ?

the suggested price on a US 987 is 2300.00 I beleve
and like 1900.00 is considered minimum allowed for the whole package tranducers, GPS antenna ect.
some dealers I have looked at will sell only the display head at a cheeper price then sell the rest of the stuff to you to get around that.

it is a super great unit if you want photo like images of the bottom of a body of water ad a diver I am in heaven.

I also have an interphase forward scanning phased array sonar that can scan a 90deg arc infront of the boat out to like 1000ft/333m I normally keep mine set at 240ft/80m so it will update fast enough to be usefull while driving my boat.
this allowes me to see any object above 90feet 30m early enough to avoid it I can also scan an entire shore line in one sweep just by aiming my boat at the shore to see the general profile.
but it is like simple underwater radar for my boat the targets are displayed like blobs most of the time. I normally keep the range down and the speed set to max but if I wish I can set it to ultra detail mode and if I hold my boat still while the scan completes I can get a pretty nice picture, but it is nothing like the 987 that can scan a submerged tree and let you count the limbs.
currantly I am using both I the forward scaning sonar is 200Khz and the sidescan is 455Khz and sofar I have seen no problems, the 987 has duel bottom sonars that are 200/50Khz but I can run just the 50Khz or turn off the bottom scan all together.
later brad

[Kerno]

The owners manual for my Humminbird 987 says only the "international"
models cans be set to read in metric for depth, temperature and
distance. Language can also be set on international models. The base
navigational map in mine is for the US as well.
I bought the Navionics Gold chart for mine and am very unhappy with it.
It is seriously lacking in detail and is poorly drawn. The Garmin
charts are exact replicas of the government issued paper charts and
are far, far better. I use the 987 for side scan and a Garmin for navigation.

[Unregistered]

hummingbird 987c

ya I am a GPS junky and I looked at the after market charts
and they are really really bad at least for the lakes of central washington.
they have lots of work to do befor they earn my money and I just droped a couple grand on a fish finder heh heh
the Garmin maps are week but better than nothing.
I would rather have alot more detail of a smaller area than have the whole state that looks like crap.
I love garmin the customer service has been steller in my years of experiance but the cartography needs lots of work befor I ever upgrade again.

[Francisco Xavier]

Hello,

Here, in Portugal lasting this month (December), they are selling the 987 Cx unit (metric system) at 2019 €. I think the price does not vary so much on the Europe zone. It is a good price comparing the US price and customs taxes.

[Unregistered]

Hello X.
Seems price somewhat higher here in Norway, but have you talked with
anyone who has actually tried/tested it ?
Does it really perform the way Hum claims?

T.

[Gonyo]

Humminbird 987c performance

Hi there,

I use my 987c for 4 month now (the price here in Germany is 3000 EUR) - for me it works fine - not like Humminbird claims but it does its job. I found a 7m sailingship in 50m depth with it - I actually searched for it, because without the knowledge that is was there I would never ever had guessed that the grey thing I saw is a boat.
I only use the 265kHz-Mode because the 455 never gave me a good echo. I had the third transducer now - the other two were too different from right to left. Thats a problem when you cannot callibrate them individually.
The 987c is good to find something - to determine what that is you need another system like UW-Camera (I use one) or just the built in echolot to get a feeling of the height of the object.
The last patch imported the possibillity to make screenshots on MMC which is a great feature.
To set a waypoint with the system on the echo itself doesnt work for me because it makes the waypoint on the wrong side!
If you have a 200 tanker in 20m depth you´ll get a good echo - for everything else you need another system!

Cheers

Gonyo

[Kerno]

If you are looking for something that is made of fibreglass, like most small power and sail boats, you have to rememer that fibreglass is mostly invisible to sonar underwater. That's why you can mount a transducer to the inside of a fibreglass hull and it will work just fine. Until a sunken fibreglass boat becomes encrusted with growth, all you'll see on the sonar is the metal parts, like the engine and the keel. It is not a problem that is limited to the Humminbird. It is true of nearly all sonar systems from fish finders to towed sidescan.

[Unregistered]

hummingdird 987c

I agree kerno the fiberglass is mostly invisable to sonar
if your looking for a fiberglass boat you may look for the absorption
of sonar rather than the reflection.

on my web sight I have an older fiberglass and wood boat thich showes
up nicely in contrast to the rocky bottom.
keep scanning
brad

[cmasby]

455 KHz

Hi,
Does HUMMINBIRD 987 operate in 455KHz range as sss? I cannot find info on their website.

[Unregistered]

hummingbird 987c

yes it will do side scan at 455Khz and also 262Khz which has a bit more punch but you lose detail.
note detail means nothing if you can't get a return heh heh
http://webpages.charter.net/bhamptonkc7mrp/

[Unregistered]

987c for tuna fishing?

I'm trying to decide how useful this unit would be for offshore fishing. The fishing ground where I fish is about 200' to 350' deep. I would like to mark bait balls and tuna in the upper water column (100' or less). How would this unit perform? What kind of image can I expect? From what I've read, there will be a black strip down the middle of the screen due to the blind spot???

[Kerno]

I think you'd find it frustrating at the depths you're talking about. As you've picked up from prior posts, I can't see the bottom over about 120 feet. The unit has non adjustable gain and the gain is optimized for bottom structure rather than fish. I've used mine a lot, but I don't think I can say I've ever been able to discern anything that might be fish in the image. The ratio of screen area to are covered is far too high. If a 60 foot boat in 60 feet of water becomes less than 3/4 inch long on the screen, your chances of seeing fish are not great. A one foot fish will occupy about one pixel. I think you'd do much better with a system like the Interphase or Raytheon searchlight type system.

[Kerno]

I tried the unit today looking for fish on a site after we dove it. As such, I kew there were fish there in 55 feet of water. The 687c did not give me any image that would let me discern any fish on its side scan mode. In its fish finder mode it worked, uh, just like a fish finder.