i have a humminbird ic 597 HD/DI combo thats been on my kayak for a little under a year now, its worked fine untill recently. i accidentally left the unit turned on for around 1 hour one day while the transducer was out of water, and i have a bunch of scrapes on the transducer from running in skinny water and dragging my boat around.

now, my 2d sonar looks all funked up. i cant tell surface ffrom mid water column from the dang lake bottom. its just a huge jumbled mess of colors! and my fish ID doesnt work anymore. further yet, my depth indicator is also acting screwy. it keeps jumping to random depths, like 3' to 555' to 73' to 986' to 1' and never really stay on the actuall depth that im at.

i have no idea what the hell happend and was wondering if anybody else has damaged thier transducer, and what kind of affect it has when you scrape one up or leave it turned on out of water?

im waiting on a response from HB customer service

Mine on the TM is beat to hell but it still works just fine must be something else with the unit.

first off, what the hell is that add doing in my post????

secondly, NOOOOOO!!!! please dont say that lamoon78! my transom mount transducer actually inst that bad, but it has been left on while out of the water for an hour on a hot day. i dont know if that has anything to do with it because the scratches and scrapes arent really that bad, and they're mostly on the sides of the ducer.

i had the opportunity to plug my buddys head unit (same model as mine) into my mount and i was having the same problem with his unit, but when he plugged my head unit into his ducer, mine seemed to work fine. obviously this leads me to believe that my ducer is screwed, but i really wanna figure out what exactly screwed it up to begin with, so i dont do it again!

this is very frustrating and i actually lost sleep over it last night!

I'd call Humminbird today.

Still aint a cheap fix unless Humminbird does something for you maybe they will if the ducer aint that old cause them dam things aint cheap. I dont know which one you have but the HDSI ducers for the bigger units are 200 bucks.

Call Customer Service they are the best to deal with. Calling is better and quicker than email.

i should change the title of this thread to HB AWESOME!

ide like to take this opportunity to pimp HUMMINBIRD for just a minute. as previously stated in this thread, im an idiot and i ruined my transducer by scratching the craap out of it. after contacting HUMMINBIRD about what i might have done to screw up my toy, they responded back to me ( the very next day! ) telling me that yes, i did in fact screw up my transducer by scraping half of it flat while dragging my kayak into the garage. But, unprompted by them, i was asked for my contact info, which i gave them, and before i knew it they had sent me an e-mail saying that a new transducer was in the mail, no questions asked!

so thank you HUMMINBIRD, you freaking rule! i was literally losing sleep thinking about how i ruined my FF, but HB came through and has put my heart at ease!

That's why I am died in the wool Humminbird and alwys will be.!

HB is Good (Really GREAT).

Go to thier WeB Site for support (or get on) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sideimaging/

HB will fix you, and your best bet is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sideimaging/

Problem Solved,

the package must have come while i was fishing on saturday or working on friday because when i got up on sunday the new ducer was on my porch. SWEET, THANKS HB!

It's amazing how easy and quick it is when you need service....thanks for sharing another positive response of Humminbird's World Class Customer Service.