When I said I had the finder on for 5 hours a day I wasn't implying I fish 5 hours a day. I may circle back to fish the odd hump I find but I'd go brain dead fishing more than an hour or two at a crack, 15 minutes if they're biting! No offense but I could fish at home yet don't. I mostly just like catching a glimpse of what I can't see and making the time I do fish more productive.

Puckster wrote on Apr 10^th, 2014 at 2:56am:

Is the weight in ounces or grams?

zski wrote on Apr 10^th, 2014 at 7:09am:

83Ft right where you said it would be.  But the wind made it hard to stay there.

quote author=db link=1377347241/80#80 date=1397113869]Magicpaddler wrote on Apr 9^th, 2014 at 12:03pm:

That reminds me Magic, I meant to ask, don't you use 9 AAs in your battery tube?

One reason I ask is I've never seen AA batteries come in anything but even numbers so 9 seems like a pain to me. The other reason is a fresh set of 8 in the finder reads 17v which concerned me the first time a borrowed a 12v finder.
1.5v x 8 = 12v.
9 would be 13.5v on the label but 19v in practice?

FWIW the only resistor I saw was the one resistor i saw. What 8" wire where? I know what a circuit is but beyond that I'll take your word for it. I know what a 6-32 is though!
. [/quote]

9 batteries verses 8? I have always used 9 but in looking at data that I have recently taken if  you use 8 Lithium batteries when the voltage gets down to 10 V only 5% of the energy would be left in the batteries.  So it would be more economical to run 8.  The data shows that 10 Alkaline are required to get the energy out before the voltage drops below 10 volts.   

Magicpaddler wrote on Apr 9^th, 2014 at 12:03pm:

Does the name of the material “Nickel-Titanium single strand wire” or the statement “That is some strange stuff” ring a bell? I am sure you have read about it some where!

Read through this thread very carefully and made a laser like decision on a battery purchase. I needed a new drill set and ended up buying a Rigid 18 volt combo kit with two Batteries that are rather square shaped for the most part, unlike others with an appendage. These batteries fit perfectly in 4"x6"x2" project box that I purchased at Radio Shack along with two alligator clips and a D/C receptacle and plug for easy disconnect and storage.
:dankk2

RedOwl

I just noticed that when I cropped the picture of the depth verses current draw I cropped the depth numbers off the bottom.   Sorry about that.  Each tick on the bottom is 10 Ft and that make the right hand side 90 Ft. The left side is 0 Ft.

Is your box waterproof or could it be made so?

Waterproof? not sure on that I do have a gasket on the cover to make it somewhat water resistant. The D/C receptacle needed to be sealed up on the inside, for that I used hot glue this also secured the the wires inside the box.

Any idea of battery life on your set-up?

Battery life? not sure, batteries are the 18 volt Hyper Lithium Ion rechargeable, I'm pretty sure they are lighter than 8-10 AA's (don't have a weigh scale) and takes up less space. Maybe someone more tech savvy could do the math and chime in on this.

My score with this set up was mainly dual purpose rechargeable batteries @ 18 volts and eliminating the amount of AA batteries I had to bring while camping -two sets (16) f/ the f/f, 2 f/ head lamps x2 (guy in front), an another 4 f/ a hand held GPS which I may not bring given that a map doesn't requires any batteries.(thats was 24-26 AA's)

I'll be testing this set up on fishing opener while Lake Trout fishing. Any one ever check out Kemo?