Fishonjohn, thanks for the details but we have through all the wiring, updtates, and transducers over and over. My mechanic has done hundreds of these installations as he was the former lead mechanic at NR.

The problem is now solved and it was the NEP the entire time. One of Lowrance techs was at the boat show and informed me of a bulletin issued over a year ago regarding interferrence with the NEP1 and the fix was a new NEP2. Neither of those solved the problem. What solved the problem was elimitating the NEP all together.

I think the bigger problem is that every "tech"/csr I have called at the 800# has never heard of this bulletin and some didn't even know what a NEP was. If someone would have just mentioned a year ago about this bulletin, I wouldn't have spent thousands $$ in diagnostics. Unbelievable to hear the number of people that have experienced the same poor customer service experience and quality control issues.

I have an old garmin gps chartplotter and an older Interphase (cool company in California) fish finder. I was on a friends boat in Nootka Sound last year and he used a Lowrance HD that had a really really nice/accurate chart display so I looked into upgrading with a Lowrance HD unit. I may not be that smart, but I couldn't follow the logic of the product line on the web. I couldn't figure out what the difference was between models and the ones my friends have currently.... are already discontinued after a year or so. After spending too much time on trying to follow what models were even available, I gave up. Like boats, the best salesman a company has is the actual unit in the boat and Lowrance may be losing sales while they are trying to chase the first to market/new technology buyers. Their gear must be pretty good, but I don't want to be lost in upgrades so I'm looking at Furuno now. 2 cents.

I believe coverage is crap shoot.

The Hummingbird data showed the lower Canal as land? Corporate bass holles will not be shrimping with me any time soon.

one word--FURUNO

Yep, that's what the smart money says.