I have both the furuno 295 with an in hull 2kw 200 kh , a garmin gsd26 matched to a 4012 head unit  and a simrad nse12 matched to a bsm2 ,these units have airmar chirp tm260 transom mount 1kw transducers one at 200kh the other at  a lower frequency. Both the garmin and the simrad give better resolution of fish in the water, neither match the sea floor discrimination of the furuno. If i am looking for fish i run the chirp but for the bottom discrimination i run the furuno. Sorry to dissapoint but thats where its at right now. All updates have been applied to the  chirp units but so far no change to bottom reading performance. As to which give the best fish return the garmin works right out of the box and can be tweaked further, have done a lot of tuning on the simrad, not for the faint hearted. My opinion is that the simrad is more difficult to set up, it did not work out of the box and i am still not 100% satisfied with its perfomance fish wise.  My fishing partner Vic, aka septimus who also posts on this forum has the simrad set up paired to the bigger airmar transducer mounted in his hull  and has had major issues with navico over his set up he has experienced less than favourable support from them. Septimus has seen my set up and we both worked on his instalation i have no doubt he will give you his views shortly. If you can wait untill easter next year we could see furuno release its chirp unit, buying the 295 now and selling it later is perhaps the best option depending on your needs.  

Wow, great response. Thanks very much.

The TM260 isn't chirp, although it will run on some Chirp head units, albeit poorly. The smallestchirp tranny might be the tm265?

Paula, can you confirm you are using the TM260 tranny with the CHIRP Sounders. As Till correctly states, you can run non CHIRP trannies with some CHIRP Sounders but apparently they loose over 75 percent of the transducer capacity....... Are you sure they are not the CHIRP TM265's........

Oh yeah, go read continuous wave for bw tips, they would have thee good goss on transducer placement.

Till, the yanks seem intent on using poxy transom mounted transducers on whalers....they all seem terrified of doing shoot through or through hull........just looked at my mates dads 235, he has a Navnet 12 inch with a M260 shoot through. Apparently works really well. I would guess the Navnet with sounder module would have similar functionality to a FCV 295???

OOPS MY MISTAKE, i got the jelly mixed up with the custard, i am running the chirp transducers and not the  tm260 , a bit of day jar vue from my first furuno set up, didnt check the transducer numbers and went from memory. I AM RUNNING the  AIRMAR TM 265 H on the Simrad  and AIRMAR TM 265 ML on the garmin, the poor performance from the simrad is not from the transducer as both chirp transducers units work well on the garmin as far as fish discrimination goes but not on bottom discrimination. It is a software issue that neither garmin nor simrad have sorted out yet  For the record the colour palette for the 295 is 64 colour ,this is not the case with the garmin or the simrad where bottom discrimination is the thickness of a red band with little else to define bottom features. i have run the 295 for quite a few years and ran the fcv 1100 prior to this, as a a commercial fisherman ( LFBF 98) for 32 years, this gear is of prime importance to earn a living and i take the immagery generated vey seriously.  The 295 does have a wider colour palette with specific colours for sand, weed, coral mud etc . This has been verified by the use of a HD drop cam camera linked to a hd lcd tv to confirm the bottom composition. Simply the software developed by Simrad and Garmin focussed on fish signal definition and not bottom composition, discussions with Simrad tech. has verified they are working on further development and they agreed this needs more work but after 3 updates they are not there yet, Garmin were not interested in my feedback . Sorry for my error hope this sorts it out. I WILL ASK SEPTIMUS TO POST HIS EXPERIENCES with his set up , he was able to internally fit the jumbo size in hull chirp transducers that i could not fit. 

Thanks for clarifying.

Interesting as the one thing Lowrance do now ok is show bottom, not fish.

Don't forget to check in with Glastro for some real-world Chirp tips.

 I had a Simrad nss12 with Bsm2 and  a r599 Airmar chirp transducer. All the latest gear and was excited to test it thinking it would be awesome.

it was shit and we had nothing but issues losing the bottom at depth over 100m. Navico had no idea and just kept throwing software updates at us and it just got worse.

we gave it back to navico for a refund

we now have a FCV 295 with the R599 3 kw tranny and it is awesome.

dont bother with the Simrad chirp. You will lose money and time f - ing around.

Well there you have it!!!

You have bought an awesome boat John, buy an awesome sounder. Go the Furuno, the reults speak for themselves....don't recall too many on here with them complainining.

Cheers

Mullows

Certainly looking like CHIRP ain't quite mature enough yet.

Great feedback guys.

If it was my boat, I look at the best transducer I could fit, then look at what head unit is best suited. I went the 295 with an R199 in the back of my boat as there is heaps of space to install shoot through, and only shooting through about 8-10mm of glass. This worked for me and no complaints once I figured out how to drive the Furuno sounder. Like anything, push enough buttons, look at it long enough and read alot it will all make sense. For me furuno are really easy to navigate and make sense.

I'm  thinking that in the USA most boats will be set up for game fishing and not so much deep dropping, but things will change as it becomes more popular, this is why I think lowrance, simrad, garmin etc focus on picking up baitfish and billfish, where as the furuno can and states that they can discriminate fish close to the bottom. I guess, pick your sounder for the type of fishing you do the most. This is what I did and can't be more happier with my furuno for deep sea fishing.

I have never used or seen other brands in action so I can't comment.......

thankyou

Ive been waiting a while for more tested reviews on the chirp gear. Sounds like theres tech advances that need to be done before its successful in deep water.

Appreciate the time you've taken to commet. Cheers!

Now I just have to figure out how im going to fit a R199 Im my hull??

Doug the fish your seeing are just air bubbles in your hull laminate. ; ) Go wet face!!

I don't think anyone should write off the Raymarine CHIRP 450 until you see what it is capable of. One of the boys from PGFC has just installed it and is sea testing this week. Some of the screen shots i have seen have been truly awesome. Bottom lock in 570 m off a 1KW transom mount transducer marking individual fish.

295 & 2 or 3 KW trannieis a great unit and i am tossing up between this and a Raymarine CHIRP 450, or waiting to see the new Furuno CHIRP in the new year.

I will try to get some screen shots from a test ride this week

Cheers

Southy

do you think you could get some info with the screen shots too. ie picture either at idle, 5knots 10knots ect.

No issue mate let me see what i can get and will come back

Cheers

 I haven't even bothered installing the trannies on my new HDS9 because my 585 is doing the job beautifully. I seem to learn a new tweak every time. The HDS though is an absolutely awesome easy to use GPS. I will be interested to see the CHIRP technology in full flight when properly developed for the amatuer market.