Seeking input on Marcum and Vexilar compatability

[Ihawkangler]

Bought an Ice-35 last year to go along with my FL-8  to avoid interference.   Just not a fan of the Ice-35 and looking at getting a Marcum.  I read one blog and it says they work great together with noise reduction and then another that says you can't fish them in the same hut.  Would love to get another FL-8, but my experience with two Vexilars side by by side was not good, even with the noise reduction. 

Thanks.

[Trump]

I have a showdown and everyone else in the group shoots with a vex I've never had any problems with noise on or from mine .  I've seen the 8's act up when there is 3 of them sitting in a 6 man hub and that's about it.  I fish with 1 other guy quite a bit in my otter and he has never had interference on his fl-18 ultra pack. 

[rjbreese]

I fish alot with a buddy that has a fl-8se and i have a fl-18 ultra and rarely do we have problems, if we do all we do is one of us push their interference button, one push of the button at a time until it clears both of ours up....... But as far as our Vexilars fishing near(within 20 ft, ect...) a Marcum EEEEWW...terrible amout of interference on our vex's that takes alot of adjustment to get calmed down if even able to get rid of it, thats my experience anyway.

[esox_magnum]

I have had many different vexes fish next to or near my LX units. 99% of the time not a problem. Have fished 3 LX 7's a lx5 fl22 and fl8 in the same area in 45' of water without a hassle

[Kevin23]

I have a marcum and most other people I fish with have vex's. A couple other marcums but for the most part its vex. I have not noticed any interference on mine and nobody has spoken up and said they had interference from me. I do have interference when fishing next to a zercom, but 2 presses of the IR fix that.

[hnd]

regardless of the unit, if you can't clear up 2 or 3 units of interference, i don't know what to tell ya. i'm simply amazed at people telling others to not buy a unit because of interference. 

[Ihawkangler]

The only unit I have not seen disrupt a Vexilar or be disrupted by a Vexilar is the Humminbird.  I have fished Vexilars in the same hut and both went bonkers the whole time regardless of how much frequency changing we did.  I have also fished near other anglers with Marcum's and they had my Vexilar showing a similar display to lots of clutter in the water.  I am not refuting anyone's views, just seems like it is very random if units interfere with each other and if so, which units do / don't.

[toofuss]

#1 thing to try is getting your transducers as close to the same depth as possible. If one is deeper than the other it screws with things big time

[holehopper]

From my experience, there are a couple of things that play into this:

1. "Width" of transducer cone.  If you are fishing with a 19 or 20 degree transducer, you aren't necessarily going to "cause" more interference but you are going to receive more interference than if you had a narrower cone angle ducer.

2.  Water depth. The deeper the water the more it will compound the issue described in # 1 above. 

3.  FL-8 "version":  Vexilar has made several iterations of the FL-8.  The original model (after Hondex and Si-Tex) was simply the FL-8.  No interference rejection at all.  The next version was the FL-8 SLT.  Has interference rejection (IR) but a very basic version of IR that wasn't all that effective.  The current version of the FL-8 is the "SE" version.  This has up to date IR and will perform better than the standard FL-8 or FL-8 SLT in terms of filtering out interference.   

[Ihawkangler]

Thanks Holehopper. That makes sense based on my experiences last year.  I picked up an older model FL-8 and it was basically useless around any other flasher.  My 2 year old FL-8 picked up a little interference, but I was able to negate it enough to fish with.  This was on a day with probably 6-8 other angles within earshot.  Some of the guys around us had Marcum's and they did not seem to be bothered.  This topic belongs in the category with Bigfoot and the Bermuda Triangle. 

[hnd]

we had an slt8 that we fished in 35' of water ina  community hole regularly.  if there were lots of guys around, its 4 or 5 points of IR was worthless. 

any newer unit should clean up without much hassle unless you are fishing 35' plus and there are 20 units around.