"Sound travels faster underwater, so perhaps it pings or listens harder out of water, I'm not sure. "

Hence my question.

Mine is an X-4 portable.
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Judging from memories of my old green box with the two knobs, muddy bottoms in deep water required a higher setting than hard bottoms in shallow water. Does that also equate to more current draw?

The last three I've used had a manual and an auto setting for depth. Auto was fine by me. My theory is when the ducer is attached to the hull of an overturned canoe all night, it was striving to ping the moon at full blast. The same ducer in a bucket would be minimal current draw as my theory goes. This was probably the fullest feature one I've used and it was also siliconed to the hull. Batteries were totally dead the next day.
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I've never heard the ducer out of water worry before. You guys all shoot through the hull right?

I was curious is all. Glad I don't have to worry that I knowingly damaged anyone's transducer.
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:) No worries. That mapping feature you figured out is pretty cool.

What would be really cool in my book is a bluetooth transducer and an app or two for my phone that uses Tesla's wireless power grid, and WiFi! No wait, maybe just depth maps of all the Q lakes...