bobby b.

Bill, I did have a problem registering the troller. After installing the App, turning on the Chartplotters, and turning on the Chartplotter wi-fi on my phone, Active Captain automatically saw the two graphs and the LiveScope, and automatically registered them using my hotmail acount (I have no idea how it knew the email account I use as I have two on my phone), and then updated the software. I tried several times to have it see the Force but nada. A day later or so, I turned it all on, the Force appeared. It's magic. Bobby

It's too early for me to say that but I do agree that the Humminbird Mega down/side is awesome.

It's Tim, correct. If so, I met you a couple months back at Extreme to ask Jack about the turret. I had heard there was a local guy working on them but I did not know anymore. You were sitting at the table visiting. I would appreciate some guidance on the setup. I will go to Aunts Creek again tomorrow (about 7:30) just to play with the new toy, weather permitting. I'm sure I will go more again next week. Let me know when you are available and I will PM you accordingly. I enjoyed visiting with Mike Roller and spent a couple hours touring the plant as I was interested in the oil drilling stuff they make being a retired engineer. Bobby

Had the new boat on the water earlier this week for the first time not counting the run with the tech. and here are my first impressions. For a background I had a sport deck boat for the last 10 years because I did more water sports (wakeboarding) than fishing but now am too old for that so I bought a new Ranger Z519. The old boat had top end Humminbird Helix units and a Minnkota Ulterra troller. I was reluctant to give up the Humminbird stuff because I felt like I really understood the graphs and loved the self deploying trolling motor. But since I like video fishing the Panoptix seemed to be the thing to get plus the positive reviews on the Garmin stuff made it the obvious choice. So I ended up with the 12 inch Echomap Ultra 126SV on the bow and the 10 inch Echomap Ultra 106SV on the Console and the Panoptix Live Scope connected to the front graph. The Panoptix transducer is mounted to the RM Industries turret so it can move independently of the trolling motor. The bow transducer is a GT54UHD high definition mounted in the Force troller and the console unit is same mounted to the 10 inch manual jack plate. As I previously posted the Ranger came with a glassed in Garmin GT8HW which is not compatible with the high definition stuff so I bought a cheap Garmin Striker 4 graph for the moving bottom readings. This required a 4 – 8 pin conversion wire. Surprising this setup worked to at least 45 mph. I launched at Aunts Creek and ran up and down the James up to Bridgeport, about 50 miles total running on this first day. By the time I stopped playing around it was 10ish and too hot for me but I found a shady spot and lowered a drop shot rig where I saw a bunch of fish on the Live Scope in about 20 fow. I assumed that the fish were bluegill due to the number. A fish hit that bait pretty quickly and broke the line and I saw a bigger fish image on the Livescope heading for the bottom. Too cool. No lie. It was too hot and I needed to head home so I did not retie but just left for a little more boat playing before getting back to Aunts Creek. So here is my first impressions: · The Livescope is awesome and I don’t even think I have it dialed in. Other than changing the appearance color, it is all at default settings. · Same goes for the 2d, down, and side imaging. · The scope setup is intuitive and hardly requires looking at the manual. The manual is about 10% the size of the Helix manuals. · I am not sure about the built-in mapping. I really liked my Humminbird lakemaster chip. I have an older Helix 9 2d that I can mount just for the mapping. However with the Garmin stuff you can color as many different depth ranges as you want. · The Force trolling motor is quite and responds super-fast. I think if you had it turned up high and pushed too quickly to the right or left without you butt in the seat you get end up going for a swim. It is easy to deploy and stow. · I ordered the standard Merc gauges but were not available due to the virus so Ranger gave me the MercMonitor Eco setup for free. Additionally, all the engine data reads on the Console graph as well. One of the many features is the gauge will tell you where the optimized trim setting should be given the rpm as well as the gal/hr being burned. Supposedly the Eco unit records this data and modifies the trim recommendation over time. The best fuel economy I noted was about 5 gal/hr. at about 30 mph I think. · I had some trouble moving the waypoints from the Humminbird to Garmin but that was because the instructions were wrong. Everything I read said that the gpx file had to be in a subfolder on the SD card. Wrong, it needs to be in the root directory. I moved it there because the locator indicated it could not find the file. Once found, no problems. Summary - AWESOME. More to follow maybe. Hope this helps anyone wanting to make the switch. As Bill B. pointed out, lots of bucks. I think I did the whole electronics thing for about $9000 but I think it was a deal because the install was basically free. Switching over on an existing boat could cost 20 plus hours of labor time. Bobby

Bill, I ended up getting the Z519 and added the Ranger Ski pole for the kids. I assumed the TM was the longer one but I'll measure it today. Heading over to Purdy this morning to get the transducer turret thing installed. Will report on that soon. Thanks for all the info you provide here.

Thanks Bill, Got it - I adjust the motor depth to give 10 inches. Bobby

Bill, I don't understand the quote above - crushed coils? - do you mean the coiled up wire at the top of the motor shaft? - Also 6 inch above the block - what do you mean by block? Thanks The new boat is finally in hand. Went for the test run with the tech yesterday morning - everything worked well - the little Garmin Striker locator connected to the hull transducer worked ok at least to 30 mph - ran the boat up to 67 mph (not quite all the way) so likely to get near the advertised 70 mph out of it - but wasn't looking at the little graph to see if it was reading because I was just holding on. Regarding the Garmin install, the Branson West Marine techs know what they are doing -can't say the same for the Ranger Company - Ranger ran tiny wire to the Live Scope black box so that had to be redone by the dealer - also I questioned the location of the black box under the front panel - when you see fins on an electronic box, your first clue would be "I wonder if this thing gets hot" - plus I had the 126sv mounted flush so there is little to no air circulation under there - the black box may need to get moved but there is a limit given the transducer cable length. Because Ranger did not offer the Echo Ultra series graphs, these were installed by the dealer - they did a great job - Ranger Co. installed the Force, the black box. The Live Scope transducer was left in the box as I requested because I will have RM Industries install the turret thing (tomorrow). First impressions - AWESOME boat but then it should be for the price - this is the most expensive thing I've ever bought except my current house - just to put things in perspective, the boat was almost 3 times the cost of most first house and just a little less than my second house (which had 6 bedrooms in 4000 sq. ft) that I lived in for 30 years before retiring. - Just saying. More to follow Bobby

Thanks for that info. I'll call to get those fixes going. Branson West Marine is not an authorized Garmin repair center. They told me that when they applied, they were denied because Ulrich was authorized and nearby.

Bill, It will be interesting to hear more about your reps setup. My guess is that the GT54UHD is connected to one of the Echo Ultras and the AIrmax B258 is wired to the second Echo Ultra. He can switch views from one graph to the other. That B258 cost about $700 before installation cost. Since my boat dealer had the boat totally opened, wiring exposed at every access panel, I decided to connect something to the hull transducer so I ran to BassPro and bought a Garmin Striker unit and a Garmin 4 pin to 8 pin adapter cable (part number 010-12719-00) from Ulrich and we wired it up - total parts cost was less than $150. It worked at least with the boat sitting on the trailer and there was a good place on the dash to mount it. Kinda funny tough - $130 entry level graph sitting besides a top of the line $2500 graph. The dealer should be done early next week. More to follow. As an aside, there was a boat in the shop there getting its third Force trolling motor installed in as many months. One of the replacements was because he broke the composite shaft. His most recent problem was that when you touch the foot pedal the unit goes spinning in circles - I saw this happen. The dealer tech told me that the Garmin rep told him that there are three (?) design issues that Garmin is working on and will have fixes out soon. I don't know specifics and a quick google did not help. Bobby

My new boat is almost ready to go but there is a small problem with the Garmin setup that Garmin may just be discovering. Those considering Garmin may find this interesting. My setup is as follows: Console – Echomap Ultra 106sv connected to a GT54UDH transducer on the transom. This is their best high definition transducer. Bow – Echomap Ultra 126sv connected to the GT54UDH transducer built into the Garmin Force trolling motor. Panoptix Livescope connected to the Bow graph. Because Ranger did not offer the Echomap Ultra series graphs, the local dealer is installing these but Ranger installed the other Garmin stuff including a GT8HW-IH 2D transducer glued in the hull for high speed bottom readings. The normal deal is to y-cable the hull and transom transducer into the Console unit. It turns out that the GT8 transducers (or any other transducer) is not compatible with the UHD transducers and y- cabling. This was discovered by the boat dealer because he could not get it to work and subsequently was told by Garmin there was no solution other than to use a GT30 transducer on the transom (not high definition). When I called Garmin, it seemed to me that although I was talking to one of their better techs that he was surprised at this and had me on hold for quite some time as he worked on it with his team. Again the options was to use the GT30 on the transom or forget the hull transducer. So it’s not that big of a deal given GPS mapping should keep me from running aground but I thought you guys considering Garmin could benefit from the hours my dealer and I spent on this. I do have a potential work around which is to buy and install a very inexpensive Garmin Striker graph for $120 which may be compatible with the hull transducer using a 4 to 8 pin conversion cable. This would give the bottom reading. I say Striker only because it is small and I found a place on the dash where it would fit. One more interesting thing. Ranger installed the Livescope blackbox upfront under the bow graph mounting plate which is already pretty crowded but ran a very small gauge wire from the batteries in back, so the dealer had to run 8 gauge to it. Hope this wasn’t too boring or too long but I thought some might find this interesting. Bobby

Never mind - I'll just wait but thanks

In the Fall they have a good sale on medium quality chest waders - I say medium because they seem to only last one or two seasons but for $119 not too bad. Rogers sporting goods for all things duck hunting.

The dealer can track boat build progress on the Ranger website (I cannot) plus they must have an unlisted phone number to call Ranger and they respond immediately. When I called Ranger I always got the operator but I always got the voice mail of the one I needed to talk to and they never called back. You might try your local dealer or if you dont have one near by, call the Branson West Marine parts guy - they seem to be on the ball. Bobby

Mike, I've been told that the boat is complete in Flippin, but they have not called the dealer to come and get it. Paperwork maybe? Thanks for asking. Bobby

Each - If you put two of them in series for a 24 volt trolling motor or three in series for a 36 volt trolling motor and each is rated for 100 amp hour that is the theoretical total you COULD get for the setup so a troller pulling 50 amp on high would mathematically last for 2 hours before reaching 10.5 volts with new fully charged batteries. But in reality it would not last that long because the discharge capacity is not linear and the battery depletes more at higher discharge rates. The standard amp hr rating is measured at a draw of 5 amps I think.