MT,
For me the flat bottom puck is far easier to attach and remove. Have been using a Vexilar LC-10 with that style transducer for years. Mounting the transducer below the thwart directly in front of stern seat. Day 1, small dab of silicone on bottom of puck, press it down and it's good for the trip. Last Day, break out the 99 cent click knife and scrape/slice it off. That point of the boat suites the puck style better.

Nanda,
Still don't understand how i missed it the first couple times i looked for it. one of those duh moments, and already had the question posted here. Happy fishing to you too! Without the depth finder, we're feeling around in a dimly lit room.
Tim

On the power issue, I found mixed results on the Lowrance Elite 4x. I made a battery pack that held 10AA batteries. The first set I used ran for about 12 hours total. However, after that when I turned the unit off I didn't disconnect the batts and I think there was some 'phantom' drain occuring, so I went through a set of batteries in about 4 hours when it was on.  My buddy and I did some math on it and decided that 10 D cells would give us the best weight,cost, and run time compared to a 12V motorcycle battery.

I don't bring a fish finder, but who knows down the road?
I see that most here use a AA battery pack to power their devices.
I was just curious if anyone had tried using other type/size batteries?
Are the AA the best in relationship to power/life/weight?
Has anyone tried using other type batteries wired in series or parallel.
Maybe D, C or some 9 volt?

I did some Googling and from what I could gather it all depends on the device your trying to power and how long you want to use it.

What Magic says is all true, additionally we are finding that there is a fairly wide range of "normal" power consumption from the different types of locaters. Some or most of that has to do with factory or user programming. When you start using the more sophisticated locaters you will find that there is less voltage tolerance and greater power consumption if you want to take advantage of all the features provided by those devices.
Even on the most basic types of locaters these things affect power consumption:

Backlight, the #1 cause of battery drain (not counting leaving it turned on all night - I wish locaters would have an auto off feature). I would not use a locater that cannot have the backlight programmed to be off at all times, except when fishing at night of course.

Display screen type: Color and especially HD screens use more power. Black/white grayscale, though a bit trickier to interpret, use less.

Deep water use also requires more power. I'm not suggesting to never use it over deep water, just something to keep in mind if you're trying to conserve.

Alarms, turn them all off to save power. Nobody else really wants to hear them anyway.

Magicpaddler wrote on Jan 17^th, 2014 at 12:58am:


The AA's & D's were both energizer NmH batts, though I think one set of the AA's were generic brand and the performance difference was evident