I just recently purchased an humminbird 1197 and got another 1197 that same day as a present. Great day!!! What is the best way to set these up? I cant see any possible way to have SI on the front of the boat so what should I do? I have the interlink to connect the two but I am unsure if I need the second 1197 up front or if I need to send it back, save some money and get the 1157. Thanks in advance for your ideas.

sell one of them and put a lowrance up front

Why?

It was a long hard decision not to go with lowrance, trust me. I wanted the SI and I want to share the waypoints, way too hard of a process to share between humminbird and lowrance so Im sticking with the HB's for now.

I've got the SI on my dash. Mounting up front would seem to me to be useless, since you need to be moving 3-5 mph to get the best out of your SI. I would sell or trade the spare 1197 and get a good down-looking HD color sonar for the front.

You can do the SI up front but I would probably go with the interlink to share waypoints and gps receiver then use a standard transducer. I tend to fish by waypoint more than sonar. I'm going with a 788 up front to link with the 798 at the console. IMO SI is overkill on the front deck. The ability to link/share data is priceless.

because there is no comparison to the older lowrance LCX series 2d sonar.... i am not impressed with the new HDS 2d sonar.

Alpha211 how lucky do you have to be to buy one 1197 and the next day get one as a gift? It's like buy one get one free.

Alpha211,

If you're interested, the Humminbird reps are putting on a training session at Plano Marine tomorrow night, the 21st. It starts at 6:30 and dinner will be provided. Might be worth the drive for you.

Jameson I finally caught a break. After months of you giving me sour deals something good finally happens! The new boat wasnt enough to get you to fish with me, maybe these HB's will do the trick.
BOOM

FYI, my buddy tried an 1197 on the front of his boat and got a lot of interference on the side imaging when he ran his trolling motor. He said it created static all over the screen every time the motor was on.

Everything else works fine up there, but the side imaging (which to me doesn't make much sense on the front of the boat anyway for reasons already stated) didn't quite work right.

sell me one of them!!!

I have the hbird pc program on the pc. There are several ways to share way points you can save them on a sd card and move the card between units. You can put them on the pc by buying a cable kit and down loading the hbird pc program. You get this for free by regitering the warrenty and it will let you dowmload all the updates for you units. Or you can link then on the boat and share them in real time. Would go to the bbs fourm and read some of doug vandenburg's post.

bbc sonar fourm

Yep. Put em both on and interlink. After having fished in two boats with this type of set up, I wish I had a second HB up front just for the point sharing. Obviously the 2D isn't quite what Lowrance is and if that's a factor, sell one 1197 and get a 38. You can find them fairly easily.

Tell him to call HBird they will send him an interference kit that will solve that problem (Free).... I run the SI on the Console and a 8" HB 2D unit on the front. The ability to share the waypoints is great and the new Software HB has come out with recently really improves the down looking sonar.