A Call out to the experts - FF Assistance... Please

I am about to pick up my new PA and I purchased a FF/GPS that will still need to be mounted. I have been waiting for my buddy's battery kit to come in so we can pick them up at the same time. There are two questions that I have so when I do pick it up i don't have any surprises;

1) The Hobie Dealer is telling me that if I have the Transducer mounted to shoot through the hull the Temperature sensor will still work. This does not make sense to me but my only experience is Fiberglass bass boats where I know the temperature sensor does not work shooting through the hull. The PA hull is a lot thinner but the temperature could not be accurate. Could anyone please shed a little light on this subject.

2) The next question is about wiring for the battery; I ordered the battery and box in this link - http://www.diveandkayak.com/servlet/the ... ete/Detail
and I ordered the FF/GPS Combo Humminbird 788ci HD DI that comes with the transducer. what would be needed to connect the battery to the FF? Is this something a dealer should be able to do?

Thank you

You are right, the dealer is mostly wrong. You'll get a temp. reading, but it will not be accurate. Most of the time higher than actual.

To hook your FF to the battery, you should have an inline fuse and whatever connection the battery wants. I crimped on a red and a black push-on terminals to connect to my battery lugs.

It's pretty easy to do, once you've done it before, so if your dealer has installed some, he should be able to handle it.

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Hobie Island Sailing since 2006

The box you ordered comes with a plug, you can see it to the left in the photo. There is a rubber sleeve you pull off and it exposes 2 set screws. One pin is bigger and is always wired for the positive wire. This works alot better if you beef up your wire leads to 16 gauge. H bird does not include a fuse so as mentioned you will need to put one in line.

meatbucket,
I am using the same FF you have (very satisfied with it too) I use a smaller 5 amp battery and get around one and a half day's (probably around 16 hours) use before the battery drops to 8 volts and the FF won't work anymore. if a picture is worth a thousand words...........
go to this post and look at how I have my FF mounted:
http://www.hobiecat.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=33618
from the picture in the link to the battery you ordered it looks like the battery is wired to the external female plug, you will probably need to wire the male part of the plug to your positive and negative wires on your FF. If there is not a fuse inside the battery compartment I would put a fuse on the male side of the wiring plug. be sure and keep extra fuses on hand.

if your looking for a good battery, get a 12v 12.7 amp its about 40 bucks at batteries plus and they always have them in stock. They led batteries and will last about 3 to 4 trips without having to charge. So if you dont want to have to charge it every day you use the battery i would go with this. I use mine with a humminbird 385 ci kayak combo.

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Tight Lines, Joshua.

A expert Yacker emailed me and reminded me that in advanced settings the tempature can be adjusted +/- 10 degrees (Thanks again Jimmy D) but that adjustment would have to be made everytime I went out. That might be a the answer because I realy do want the Transducer to shoot through the hull. Thank you...
Bob

Atavuss
Thank you... I chose this FF after reading / seeing your post. I was looking at setting it up the same way you did but I am still playing with shooting the Transducer through the hull. It really comes down to less parts to buy right now because I am ordering a second transducer to move this FF from the PA to my boat.
The question about the battery also came from the dealer who led me to believe I need a wiring harness to connect the battery and I didn't know what he was talking about. Since the post I now know that I misunderstood him. Anyway I knew about the inline fuse if it is not installed in the prewired battery box but would you know what amp fuse is needed for the 788ci? I will look in my manual.
Bob

Bob, I ended up using a 5 amp mini fuse in a waterproof fuse holder that I mounted inside the water proof box. I always have a few extra fuses on hand as the newer mini fuses can be hard to find in remote areas. I ended up driving more than a few miles to the nearest town to find a auto store that had the mini fuses.
the cool thing about the 788ci FF is you can have it show the voltage of your battery so you know how much power you have left. the GPS is very handy to find your way around in dense fog when you can't see any landmarks, I have also used the GPS to find my way back to camp after fishing too long and it got dark on me. my buddy stopped fishing before it got dark and he said when I was out on the water with the FF on when it was almost dark it looked like I had a T.V. on.
Another thing I should mention is that if you are going to be on a lake with power boaters I would recommend you run some kind of flag to make yourself more visible. I have been very satisfied with yakattack.com flags on my yaks.

Good point I did order the Hobie Saftey Kit and the Hobie Flag.

What I noticed with the temperature is that the guy on the weather station is pretty accurate... and when out there, I could verify it was within a degree or two depending on what currents I was sitting in. Then a little while after that I quit taking the dang thing as it's just something else to mess with that I found myself not caring about. I started kayak fishing to simplify things, not adding things to putz with such as battery connections, batteries, whatever.....bury myself in trinkets out fishing. Don't let me rain on your parade. I understand. Stay safe on the water.

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Yakkingaway
Portsmouth, VA