Interphase Sea Scout, Operation Manual

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It is important to understand that the Sea Scout will often see
the bottom and will show it on the forward display. This
display information can be used to help understand the
structure of the bottom ahead of the boat, but the bottom
echos can also mask or be confused as fish targets. Several
forward display situations with comments are shown at right
The top picture and resulting screen display shows a boat in
12 feet of water. The Sea Scout’s forward range is set to 40
ft. Notice on the scan picture on the right side of the display,
the bottom is just starting to show at about 35 to 40 ft in front.
A school of fish or bait is off to the port side of the vessel at a
forward distance of about 14 feet and additional fish or bait
appears directly in front of the boat at a distance of only a few
feet. Also notice the fish or bait near the bottom on the
downlooking mode on the left side of the display.
In the lower picture and resulting screen display, notice that
even in shallow depths of 12 ft the
Sea Scout is detecting
targets at a forward distance of approximately 200 feet. When
looking far forward in shallow situations such as this, it is
advisable to adjust the gain manually. Otherwise the Auto
gain feature will reduce the gain because of the strong close-
in bottom reflections.
On the following page, two bottom situations are sketched
along with the resulting
Sea Scout Display.
Noise and Sensitivity Adjustments
The
Sea Scout features an AUTO sensitivity feature where it
continuously adjusts the sensitivity to achieve the optimum
picture quality. The sensitivity can also be adjusted manually
to allow for a reduction in sensitivity to minimize the effect of
screen noise, or to increase the sensitivity to show weaker
targets.
In the forward scanning modes, the sensitivity setting is
especially important as too little sensitivity will cause a loss
of target detection and too much sensitivity will cause an
increase in screen noise. In the AUTO mode, the
Sea Scout
increases the forward gain until there is a certain density of
targets on the display. In most situations the AUTO gain
mode works well, but manual adjustments will often be
required to get the optimum picture - especially when looking
far ahead in shallow water.
Bait
40ft Forward Range, Water Depth of 12 Ft
240ft Forward Range, Bottom Depth of 12 ft.
Fish or Bait
Bottom
Bottom
Bait