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Garmi Striker Cast Fishing Sonar for freediving

AT_Clemens

New Member
Jul 30, 2024
2
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Our freediving clubinvested in a Garmin Deeper fishing sonar and I would like to sharesome insights about it.

What is Garmin StrikerCast?
Garmin striker Cast is acastable sonar that connects to a mobile phone by Bluetooth andstreams the results to the cast app.

Hard facts:
Batterylife: 10 hours
GPS
Sonar: 260/455 kHz*
Range: 60m

*The sonar canoperate at two frequencies and has a 22x63°oval beam or 9x14° ovalbeam is usually focused enough only monitor the competition line andnot show divers at the warm up lines.


we usually attach thesonar to our trainings platform with a short string to monitor thediver and the safety diver.

The image runs from rightto left and shows a protocol of the past measurements.



Image explained from top to bottom:


red topmost line (0~1m) isthe surface and the backscatter.

blue field (1~2m) mutedarea where sonar cannot measure

green field (2~5m) thesafety diver uses a scooter and creates a lot of air bubbles whiledescending.

red U shaped line (7~15m )the safety diver descends and waits for the free diver in 15m –left side is descend to 15m, horizontal line indicates that de safetydiver is waiting at 15m,

right side shows that both divers ascend to surface

red line (22~7m) freediver ascending. (I could not fit a whole dive into one screenshot)

green line (27m) a sixpackof beer attached to a line for cooling²

green line (33m) bottomplate

green line (34m) bottomweight

green dots (35m) light and camera

²the sonar can work with two different frequencies and


what is good:
*reasonable priced
*accuracy is good
*setting are easy tounderstand and easy to find
*app is small and worksreliably without draining the battery
*diver at 60m can be seen and tracked

what is bad:
*only useful an a dryplatform or if your mobile phone is waterproof
*if attached to a buoy itmight get pulled under water and the Bluetooth connection stops untilit resurfaces.

Alternatives: deeperpro (100m Range)

if somebody isconsidering in buying one or could share experience with a deeper Iwould love to read about it.

Sg
 
Hi Clemens,

thank you so much for sharing your experiences! Just what I was looking into at the moment! By the way, are you part of the Alpnoe / Achensee team?

We are also looking into upgrading our safety setup - probably re-configuring a SUP with a counter balance system and adding a sonar. Will share our experiences once the setup is complete.

Andre
 
Hy,
Yes, i am from Alpnoe. Nice to meet you here again.

This year we had some problems with the app due to rain. The raindrops pressed random buttons and sometimes stopped the app.

If you need input for the counterweight you might want to talk to Manni he made ours and spend a lot of time optimising it.

Sg
 
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