Probably a topic that has been beat like a drum on here, but does anyone have a general place to start on settings ? My unit only has 2D sonar. Do I choose the chirp transducer or the 83/200 ? Do I turn chirp off and still leave transducer setting on wide chirp ? Just can not seem to get my unit to look right. Thanks for any and all responses and suggestions.

Did you look at any videos,...there are several on settings..lim

You want chirp transducer. The g3 units are dual spectrum and use the 200 khz low q transducer. You don't wanna select the 83/200 setting with the stock transducer. Start your chirp range from 140-240 then adjust the sensitivity. The wide, narrow and medium settings are preset frequency ranges.

Thanks for the response Jim Sr and 44 Diesel. I have looked at several videos, but most seem to talk about settings for DI and SI only.

basic sonar isnt too fancy, but it is a great tool for brish piles, and structure.
I think I would start with 'factory defaults',...write those down, and then adjust from those to get a better picture..

If you use the transducer that comes with the unit, you don't choose any transducer. It comes setup for it. High Wide CHIRP.
If you ping the HW CHIRP piezo with 83 kHz, you can burn it up, possibly short out the circuit and damage the unit processor.

Wayne P. Thanks for the response. Hopefully no damage done, but I have chosen the 83/200 transducer as recently as this past weekend, just to see if it made a difference. How would I know if unit was damaged ? Would it quit working totally or just not read correctly ?

[quote=justchillin]Wayne P. Thanks for the response. Hopefully no damage done, but I have chosen the 83/200 transducer as recently as this past weekend, just to see if it made a difference. How would I know if unit was damaged ? Would it quit working totally or just not read correctly ?
[/quote

If damage occurs stuff won’t work.

This should help you out check out this manual on the following pages: 43, 48-49, 244:
https://879dd651a809fc1b59de-035169...HELIX%20Series%20Operations%20Manual.pdf

This will give you the parameters of your unit. I believe you have this type transducer: XNT 9 HW T

Hope this helps in understanding your unit. Good luck.

Thank you SSutton for the response and link.

Hey there justchillin. The Humminbird HW transducer doesn't have the 38/200 kHz freqs. It offers what they call Narrow and Wide. The default is Full which uses both freqs combined and is where it should be left. The Narrow is a 25 degree conical beam and the Wide is a 43 degree conical beam. You unit is capable of using a large number of transducers. However, your unit doesn't change the freq of a transducer. There is no way to choose the wrong transducer and damage a transducer. When your unit is plugged in the correct transducer is automatically chosen at that time and does not need to be altered.

For settings on 2D, use Switchfire in Clear mode, set Surface Clutter to 3, leave the Contrast neutral in the middle of the available scale, for sensitivity, increase it slightly to a starting point of 14. From there makes small adjustments in the sensitivity until you feel you have a nice clear image with a good strong bottom color. In the event that you feel like the settings are mixed up and you are not getting a good image, you can reset the settings using the Restore Defaults tab under the main setup menu. This will not remove any waypoints that you have saved, but will reset any user settings you altered.

Tight lines!

Thank you Capt. Craig for the response and information

I don't have a CHIRP model of the H7 G3, but I do have the H7 MEGA SI G3 model. With my unit there is a settings for HB 50/200 kHz, 50/200 with 455 kHz Imaging, HB 83/200 kHz, and Generic 83/200 kHz, AIRMAR Low, AIRMAR Medium, and AIRMAR 50/200 kHz transducers. Sooo with any of those choices damage can occur with HW CHIRP piezo connected.
I assume the CHIRP model has some of those also that can be chosen and the OP did just that by selecting 83/200 kHz.

No, a Helix does not have Auto Detect for transducers so any can be plugged in and the unit won't know it so there is no "automatically". Default is the transducer that comes with the unit, that's it.

Wayne P, you are correct. The CHIRP model does have choices of transducers. Not sure how many off the top of my head, but it has generic, 83/200, wide CHIRP and a couple of others . Thanks again for the information.

Helix Manual Page 12. "Connected Transducer. The control head will automatically select the transducer that was included with your control head."

When the unit is installed with the supplied transducer, the transducer is automatically selected for the supplied transducer and does not require any changes unless an alternative transducer is used. Then it must be selected. The unit reads attempts to read the freqs selected. However there is no supporting data that says if an incorrect transducer is chosen damage will occur. The transducer is designed to ping certain freqs and there is nothing from the control head that attempts to change a transducer's frequencies. The unit simply sets itself up to read and interpret signals sent from the transducer. In more than 10 years as a marine educator, I have never seen any indication of the transducer damaged.

Justchillin, It looks like you are on Cedar Creek, I am here on Richland Chambers. Let me know and I would be happy to see if we can setup your unit to get the best images for you.