david345
05.05.2021 21:46:49
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See full version: Can having fish finder on out of water ruin the transducer
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By Hawg
Started January 21, 2019 here
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I hope these tips will help you to troubleshoot your transducer, and to take good care of it so that it delivers optimal performance for many years.
Fish finders greatly improve your chances of catching fish, but unfortunately they don’t always work correctly. If your fish finder isn’t performing as it should, one possibility you need to consider is that the transducer isn’t working properly. So how can you tell if the transducer is bad?
The first thing you can do to check if your transducer is working is to turn it on and touch its surface. You should be able to feel the sound pulses as vibrations, and often you can also hear them as clicking sounds. here
If cavitation seems to be the problem, refer to the user manual for best practices on where & how to position it for better performance. You may need to get a professional to help you with this. [links]
Yes, absolutely. Transducers use piezoelectric crystals to send and receive sonar pulses, and these crystals can become cracked through wear and tear, which stops them from working properly. The crystals can be damaged from physical shock (for example if you bump into something hard with your boat), which is unfortunately difficult to avoid entirely. Read more about this in our articles on can a fish finder work out of water, and can a fish finder work through ice. more
Check your transducer periodically to make sure that it’s still oriented correctly. Transom mounts get bent out of shape quite easily over time, which impairs performance. [links]
Also, as mentioned above, turning on your depth finder out of water can damage the transducer, so it’s definitely not a good way to test it. [links]
As already mentioned, the only exception to this is that you can shoot through ice. However, even in that case it’s better to use a flasher with an ice fishing transducer, since they are specifically designed for this purpose (for more on this, check out our review of the best ice fishing flashers). more
The only exception to this rule are transducers that are set up to work through an appropriate solid substance, which is in turn connected to water. For example, some models can send and receive sound signals through fiberglass boat hulls, and if set up correctly, regular transducers can shoot through ice (for more details on this check out our article on can a fish finder work through ice?).
In order to achieve this, you can glue it directly to the hull with epoxy, or you can glue an open ended pipe to the hull, fill it with water, and then submerge your transducer into this. Make sure you choose a spot on the hull which is in direct contact with water on the outside.
Principle of sonar signaling (Source: Georg Wiora, CC BY-SA)
If you submerge the transducer in a bucket of water, you’ll probably also get a depth reading that doesn’t make sense, such as 0 ft., since most models need at least 3-4 ft. of water depth in order to function properly. So, for a meaningful test you should aim to run your model in water that’s at least 4 ft. deep to see if you’re getting an accurate reading. [links]
I really want to verify that it is working properly before I launch the boat, is this possible?
Incidentally it's a Raymarine ST50 (Airmar) type.
I really want to verify that it is working properly before I launch the boat, is this possible?