Hello all, about to become the owner of a 1976 53 Hatt MY. Wondering if anyone has tried the in hull variety of depth sounder transducers like in the links below - and if they work ok through the thick glass hulls...I hear these old Hatts are 1" thick or better (?). I had good luck with a cheap Hummingbird unit encased and epoxied inside hull of a 70's trawler...so hoping the same will work here. Thanks D http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wc...toreNum=10103&subdeptNum=10257&classNum=11062 http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wc...toreNum=10103&subdeptNum=10257&classNum=11062
While a shoot through hull ducer will work in your solid glass hull, it needs to start off with a bit more power (watts) than those units you are looking at can handle. Usually you will lose 20-40% of the signal strength shooting through a hull and yours will be on the high side of that estimate. Unless you are trying to fit to an existing sounder that has less than 600 watts of power available, you might look at using Airmars B60 or B164 units. These are "tilted-element" ducers and install like a normal through hull and they will give suprisingly good readings at all speeds. Very simple to install and you don't lose any power trying to shoot through a "blanket". Airmar (who makes virtually all ducers for all the major brands) makes them with pre-fitted cable ends that match nearly all units on the market. Neither the "tank" or caulked-in ones will give you much of a return in less than 100' of water.
Hi, I dunno about the accuracy of these things in over 100ft of water, it is the less than bit that should concern a boat with only 3 or 4% of that as a draft.
Sometimes the fingers don't type what the brain is thinking. You are correct and I did mean over 100' of depth not less than. Thanks for the catch KIWI!
Thanks for the info...how does this look in that case?: http://www.airmartechnology.com/2009/products/marine-product.asp?prodid=52&manf=Garmin
Greetings, dd, I put one of those tranducers (your last post) on Savasa and as far as I know, it works well. Don't know how deep I can "see" but I'm only worried about the last 5'. I suspect Savasa is at least 1/2" thick at mounting point. I had more than 22 degrees deadrise so I had to use a piece of PVC cut on an angle to make the bottom of the 'ducer parallel to the water surface.
I'm sure that one will work but it will still have the loss of signal strength caused by the hull. It is a relatively simple installation and doesn't require hauling to accomplish BUT you will have to be extremely careful to make sure it isn't aft of a turbulence-producing appendage like a strainer, thru-hull or strake that will seriously degrade performance. It all depends on how powerful your unit is and how deep of a return you are looking for. For coastal and intracoastal cruising it will probably be just fine. Way off in the deep you will probably be referring to the chart plotter for your depth.
