John and I are getting closer to taking off. We keep making lists of all the things we want and need before going offshore. One thing we are considering is the forward looking sonar. We have been reading Jimmy Cornell's books and he recommends it. Have others used this? Is is worth the expense?

The Echo pilot is generally a good allround unit...I have used it on a few boats and it preforms as stated...there are more expensive/supper sonars but the echo pilot is good value/pleanty good enough for a duck....I made a classic blunder in positioning our transducer...I put it just infront of the forward most fuel tank, as far aft as possible in the forward cabin/watertight compartment as if not there I would have had to put it in the engine room and I thought it may be a little too far aft to get the best readings......keel shadow problems etc....but in hindsight it probably would have been OK.....it is great up forward but I had to build ICE fairings on it, a leveling block etc....I will always have it retracted in ICE anyway.....again I am using a dedicated display rather than a black box as I always prefer not to interface everything incase it all goes wrong. I have the silver momo display...colour looks fancy but not needed for basic info.

I installed an Echo Pilot platinium black box unit, and will use the video input of the E-12 to display the data. You will also need a speed transducer.
No experience with this unit and I bought simply on the reports of others and that of Steve Dashew

At the same time I upgraded the Raymarine sounder to a digital fishfinder transducer, and will display on the E-12 or PC.


If using an E series rather than a C, you can run Raymarine software on the PC, and have dual screen capability. Set up a wireless network and you can run the PC anywhere - for example display radar and depth in split screen mode on the bedside table. Or sonar, radar, depth, and chart on split screen modes on both displays.