Transducer Positioning

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yepi'mon
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Transducer Positioning

Post by yepi'mon » Tue Apr 04, 2017 2:04 pm

Fishos, looking for some advice if possible....

The other day I saw a video of some snapper being sounded up on an identical system to ours (furuno 620 / P66 transducer) that was much much more defined in terms of arch quality/detail.

This got me to thinking that we need to do a bit more fine tuning within the sounder unit but I also thought it would be worth making sure the transducer is mounted correctly. My old man did some research and thinks that it should be mounted lower down, so the left corner sits in line with the edge of the hull as opposed to how it is with the right side touching the edge.

Does anyone have any experience in this area? Does this look about right?

Thanks guys,
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purple5ive
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Re: Transducer Positioning

Post by purple5ive » Tue Apr 04, 2017 2:22 pm

are you loosing bottom reading when on plane etc if your still getting a good reading while going fast then i wouldnt touch it.
also what frequency are you sounding at.
i noticed that if i switched from mdeium chirp to std 88khz i get a better reading at speed.
i still loose reading on anything past 15km/hr or so

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Re: Transducer Positioning

Post by Mattblack » Tue Apr 04, 2017 2:27 pm

Looks a little bit too high to me....has it been been moved upwards (I can see a screw hole).

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Re: Transducer Positioning

Post by yepi'mon » Tue Apr 04, 2017 2:32 pm

Mattblack wrote:Looks a little bit too high to me....has it been been moved upwards (I can see a screw hole).
Not by us but the old man was thinking the same thing. The guys we bought the boat of used it up north so we are thinking they may have moved it up to stop it from damaging when they beached the boat.....

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Re: Transducer Positioning

Post by yepi'mon » Tue Apr 04, 2017 2:40 pm

purple5ive wrote:are you loosing bottom reading when on plane etc if your still getting a good reading while going fast then i wouldnt touch it.
also what frequency are you sounding at.
i noticed that if i switched from mdeium chirp to std 88khz i get a better reading at speed.
i still loose reading on anything past 15km/hr or so
Generally I am sounding at around 10-12km but have kept the bottom reading up to about 20km if it was a flat day. We have been sounding on 200hz in PPB as this was what advised.

All our returns on the sounder are more blob like rather than seeing nice arches. I initially thought this was just due to the 600kw transducer, but now I am thinking there is room for improvement!....

To be honest, I haven't actually looked to much into the sounder settings as my old man plays that part on the boat... I run the rods and bait!

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Re: Transducer Positioning

Post by purple5ive » Tue Apr 04, 2017 2:50 pm

ppb id be using lower number like the 83khz as it has a wider cone. so covers more area but readings are very basic.
200 will give clearer reading but has a smaller cone, so covers less area than 83.
mine is a lowrance unit, so this might not apply to the furunos, maybe someone with a similar unit can chime in.

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Re: Transducer Positioning

Post by purple5ive » Tue Apr 04, 2017 2:51 pm

one thing i can suggest is mark where you have the xducer now, and then play around with it (id go lower as already suggested by a smidge) that way you can rvert back to what it was like if its worse off

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Re: Transducer Positioning

Post by yepi'mon » Tue Apr 04, 2017 3:10 pm

purple5ive wrote:one thing i can suggest is mark where you have the xducer now, and then play around with it (id go lower as already suggested by a smidge) that way you can rvert back to what it was like if its worse off
haha yep i've convinced him to leave it as it until we get some more feedback on it. Can always go back to the same fixing points so shouldn't be an issue getting it back to where it is now...

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Re: Transducer Positioning

Post by rb85 » Tue Apr 04, 2017 4:09 pm

Definitely too high the bottom of the transducer needs to be below hull level use a flat edge to gauge position.

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Re: Transducer Positioning

Post by re-tyred » Tue Apr 04, 2017 5:02 pm

The transducer position looks too high.
This will not effect the arching of targets. Arches are an effect of wider beam angles. The P66 200khz has a narrow beam and will not produce much arching.
If you use the 50khz , which has approx. 45deg beam angle, then you will get arching. 50khz will not work very well at speed and you may find it too strong in shallower water, with lots of interference.
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