virgin side scanner broken in!!!

[diverelvis]

Hi guys,

had my Burton side scan for a while now but never got to use it due to various reasons. Finally got out the weekend with a group of divers from Cardiff and went for a play.

having never used it before it took me a while to get to grips with the Sensitivity-Would it be best to run it at full sensitivity while scanning and sort out the scatter afterwards?
Made a serious &%^&^&up when i played the images back-for some reason I had only managed to record about 4 runs-This really naffed me of as had been out for a while. I think i pressed exit after keying in record rather than ENT!!!!! The only thing i can come up with.
Is there any way of checking that the image is recording once set? It made it really bad as I had an amazing image come up on the screen of a wreck and its holds and deck rails so clearly visable it was like looking at a photo-and it did not record--AHHHH.
I did get an image of the wreck recoreded before that but from a distance.

Great images recorded of rocks etc and have spotted what looks like a man made image on one of the rock formations next to the wreck so worth a dive to check out-could be part of the wreck that came of when she sank.

If scanning in 50m of water for a lost wreck what would be the ideal amount of cable to run out for the side scan? should she be as close to the bottom as can manage without the risk of foul up or is it best to have herat about half way point say about 25 m? I have no idea so any help from you guys will be fantastic.

I loved the time out looking and can,t wait to get out there again. When i figure out a way to upload my images i will try and post them here.

One other question-I have read that working in the greayscale is ok but that bottom black will give better results when used to the machine-Is this correct and if so do i need to change any other setting apart from the greyline up to 60% as i am not that good at using her yet but can quite easily set it to the above and can find my way around the head unit pretty well-the Lowrance download has really helped here.

Oh one last question is there any good books worth buying that may be able to help a complete novice like me to get more out of the machine or does anyone have anything they could e mail me. The book that comes with the machine is a bit basic and does not answer all the questions??
All help appreciated.

I am sure i will think of more questions to ask
Feed me guys

Cheers
jeff

[erikgreen]

Burton settings and running

I have a Burton M1 with the extra high res feature box. I've run it on and off for two years.

I am still learning to use it frankly.. it's got a lot of potential, but its two main limitations are a pain for me at the moment. Specifically the inability to use anything but the Lowrance sonar log viewer, meant for their regular fishfinder customers, to view recordings is a problem - no mosaicing of data, nor GIS functions, or even a zoom. I can't get the data on the Lowrance file format to get a translation done, although I've gotten reverse engineered programs from a couple folks as a starting point.

The second thing is that it's a single lobed sonar, so I get one way scanning.

Aside from those, if I manage to steer a straight, slow course (very, very important) then I get some nice high res scans of bottom structure.

On the cable length thing, make sure you put out enough cable to ensure the fish is isolated from boat movement, and make sure it's not wobbling on the line end. For 150M depth I'd personally try to use about all of my cable, assuming a pretty flat bottom. For me that's 200 feet. At my usual scan speed, that would get the fish down to about 50-75 feet at most without extra weight or an extra "diving fin" on the cable.

For settings on the head unit, read the little manual burton sends. There's not a lot in there but it's got some good stuff. I set my display to about 200 foot range usually so I can see some detail in the viewer program, and I use gray on black or blue for the viewer - I'm used to that.

A couple other things I've found out.. if you set the ping speed to auto it works ok, I haven't found a better setting manually yet. I've used up to a 4 GB SD card for recordings, that works nicely and gives a really long time record.

I've heard of a book called "sound underwater images" that's great for learning side scan stuff, but it's expensive, out of print, and hard to get.

As a suggestion, although this board is nice for occasional questions, what do you think about starting a yahoo group for Burton owners? Garry (Burton) is great but I think we need to talk to other people using this unit for more information and to have a place to upload images.

Erik

PS: I went ahead and set up the yahoo group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/burtonsidescan/


PPS: A guy in sweden that makes the drdepth software (google it) is working on a translator that would change the lowrance files into a more standard format - I've offered to buy the software if he does it, I hope others will too so he gets it made