From what I hear they are the cat's meow. Expensive, but maybe worth it.

In 6 months maybe, putting a Simrad NSS on the boat, gonna eventually upgrade to CHiRP. :hihi:

The best guy to talk to about one is semperfifishing on THT
Good guy and will educate you on one not just try to sell you one.

I have spent most of the winter talking to SIMRAD (and some Ray) about this (and other electronics) as I am considering upgrading all my electronics. No question this is the way to go but after a lot of discussions... I am going to wait one more year before I make the upgrade. There should be another rev coming out with a a lot of cool features.

The latest CHIRP Transducer for this ***Just*** came out More are coming. The new transducer to really exploit CHIRP is costly...like 2500 bucks, it is a big boy as well. It will work with current ones but from what I understand you really want the latest thing to get the full performance of CHIRP. This is really cool technology, it configures itself auto-magically to produce amazing definition. I think it really excels in deep water. You should be able to pick up tile fish on the bottom in 1000' . What is cool is you can select the bottom targets...not just zoom in... but focus the unit to look at just the bottom 50' with full screen resolution in 1000' of water. (At least that is what they were demonstrating)

I've been reading the threads on THT, pretty amazing stuff. The Simrad system seems like the way to go but would be crazy expensive for me, since I already have two GPS units and one is a chart plotter. I really don't need another. I figure that to get the NSS-12 and the BSM-2 and a transducer would run me about 7 grand!

Problem with converting now is....
Just like cellphones and all electronics, soon there will be better ones.
Then the price will drop like a rock on the last generation stuff.

Its' never--ending......

Problem with converting now is....
Just like cellphones and all electronics, soon there will be better ones.
Then the price will drop like a rock on the last generation stuff.

Its' never--ending......

Good point, I may just postpone the decision for a year or two.

Chirp technology has been around for a while on the research end. The sub-bottom (i.e. below the sea-floor) imaging system we use, has a chirp signal at a much lower frequency than standard fishfinders.

I think now it is getting cost-effective enough to get into the comercial realm (similar to Hummingbirds quasi-sidescan)

I talked to the guys from seaport marine electronics at the show yesterday. As I suspected, no one makes a stand-alone FF yet, you have to buy their combo chart plotter unit to get a CHIRP black box, so we're talking about 7k to get one. I think I'll wait a while. :)