North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

You guys would have seen what's been going on with the 2 US BassPro fishos over here testing out the new Humminbird MegaLive transducer.

Well, the feedback is that there's a marked improvement in the performance of the updated transducer over a week of testing in the ABT events near Mackay in Qld.

Humminbird is to be making a public statement on 9th Dec about the new version megalive transducer.

Informal feedback is positive and those views and the test footage obtained are being cobbled together to be made official on 9th Dec.

Don't know if 9th Dec is Aus date or US date.

There WERE 2 megalive transducer prototypes in use in 2 different boats so screen results could be compared by all members of both boats.

One would have to acknowledge the role played by the ABT organisers and other competitors in assisting the exercise with minimum interference to a worthwhile series. Nothing is ever easy organising stuff like that.

Congratulations to all.


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ALSO

It's understood that a separate announcement will also be made about the new Humminbird Explorer sounder.

Scuttlebut is that the Explorer is to replace the Helix series. Timing not known. Stay tuned.

Lets see how good that info is.
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You'll recall a previous thread I put on here about Garmin LVS 32 and Garmin LVS34 plus.

In that thread I told u how an extra layer of ceramic crystals was introduced into the LVS32 transducer and renamed as a LVS34 plus.

THAT had the effect of increasing the signal strength of the transducer beam to reach out further AND to allow the lure to be seen more easily on retrieve. That's important..

Both of those effects have been described to me as improvements seen on the screens of the H/bird prototypes by the users at the Mackay dams.

Garmin also slightly increased the size of the LVS34 transducer so don't be surprised if this new megalive transducer is slightly larger than the existing transducer.

Garmin also claimed that the LVS34 plus model gave the transducer better Target Separation and THAT was a load of B/S.

The LVS34 did have slightly better TS but it wasn't from modifications to the transducer beam array.

Only an increase in CHIRP modulation can do that.

Meaning that Garmin HAD put in extra ceramic crystals in the transducer array alright BUT had also quietly bumped up the CHIRP slightly for better TS and wouldn't admit to it.

We can't have those pesky customers knowing too much, can we? H/bird has been doing the same thing.

Here's hoping H/Bird stick to the timetable they nominated. Their track record hasn't been too good.

H/Bird "jumped the announcement gun" and released a statement about MegaLive2 at Metstrade Exhibition in Amsterdam yesterday.

https://www.crappie.com/crappie/fishing ... ive-2-0-a/

H/bird was "sweating" on results from Jocumsen and Gustafsen tests here in Aus.

Humminbird is to release news for US and Pacific users of Dec 9.

The release in Amsterdam last week was for European users.

Helix model sounders didn't have sufficient processing speed to move the return data around quickly enough to cater for animation (basically video).

So the decision to simply drop Helix models was easy to replace it with another model which has faster processing capabilities. eg Xplorer.

Apex and some Solix models already have that necessary processing capability.


If there are any Humminbird users left (I'll confess to being one with a Helix), they'll have a decision to make.

I'd suggest to wait a bit to see how the images from the Mackay ABT dam testing turn out.

H'Bird finally confessed to doing the MegaLive 2 testing in Aus by Jocumsen and Gustafsen.