Garmin "Sonar Error" Message

[rooboy98]

G'day,
I'm posting this thread to try and help out the father in law. He borrowed a boat to take fishing for the week and late this arvo the Garmin Fish Finder on it started displaying a "Sonar Error" message on the display.

It is an older sounder (possibly a 410 model he thinks?). The Menu features still work but not the area of the display thats suppose to show you whats down below.

I have a Lowrance so I'm not familiar with Garmin sounders at all. Does anyone own/once owned one and possibly know what the cause of this message might be?

Cheers,
Roo.

[Jeremy]

Bit unclear what you are talking about to me. Is the boat on a trailer? Then the transducer would not be in the water so nothing to display below. Not recommended to turn the sounder on out of the water.

Does this help?

Jeremy

[oldboot]

is it in the water and is the sensor in the water at a readable depth.


is the sensor pluged in?

cheers

[rooboy98]

Yeah sorry about that, I will try to make it a bit clearer.

Basically, they took the boat out yesterday and the sounder worked fine.
They went to go out again this afternoon and it wouldn't work properly. The sounder had not been disconnected from the day before. (Yes - the boat was in the water.)

When they turned it on, the menu works and the screen begins to scroll across until about 3/4 of the way across the page, then it comes up with the "Sonar Error" message.

They have cleaned the plug as best they can and he reckons it is all plugged back in right. The transducer is still attached to the back of the boat ie. not snapped off or anything like that.

Cheers,
Roo.

[rooboy98]

Well, I just got a sheepish phone call from the father in law tonight....he goes on to tell me that there was actually nothing wrong with the sounder after all......appparently the battery was just about completely flat! (It's not charged by the engine apparently).

I replied with something like "Ah, thats good....at least you didn't have to buy a new sounder".

His reply.... "Well actually we did, we didn't realise the battery was flat until the NEW sounder we bought this morning didn't work either!"........

I couldn't help but just laugh and shake my head!