Hi All,

[jmcdboater]

Need a bit of help... Just bought a Lowrance Elite 3X Depth Sounder/Fish Finder for our dinghy. It's an inexpensive (cheap) unit, but we spend so much $$$ on the Mother Ship, sometimes the dinghy gets the leftovers.... Anyway, Lowrance's directions were pretty poor, the installation guide had absolutely NO info on where to mount the transducer. I've never installed one before, so I was learning my way thru this.

I mounted it at the lowest point of the RIB bottom. Is it possible I have the unit too close to the motor prop?

I've contacted the company for some settings help, I get a 92' reading in 6' of water, although I did get a good reading last night finally, after fiddling with all the settings... I'm getting the correct depth reading. Sensitivity, Range, Frequency, Noise Reduction, Colorline, etc...... Even a cheapie can get complicated. I reset the default settings and still had only a bunch of colored lines. This was sitting still, would that have affected it?

Appreciate any and all thoughts,

Jim

 

[FlyWright]

I'd mount it to a board that gets temporarily secured to the transom. Much easier to find the sweet spot for mounting if you can clamp the transducer before permanent mounting. Then use another mounting plate to the transom for the permanent mount.

Most mount brackets allow for a significant amount of angle adjustment so getting the right spot (less turbulence) is more important than proper angle. Once it's mounted and level, then you can work through the adjustments one at a time to note the effects. Stick to the installation before tackling the unit's logic and controls.

I think Lowrance has online simulators available for some models. They can provide an opportunity for practice before the final installation. Maybe yours is included.

 

[Peter B]

If the bottom of you RIB is fibreglass, amounting it in Sikaflex directly to inside the bottom in an out of the way place also works. Don't think that will work through metal, or timber or cored GRP though, but I have all my transducers inside my Clipper 34, as it has a solid GRP hull, and they work perfectly, and I avoided more holes through the bottom as the original installations failed.
For transom mounting (I also have various Lowrance models), they recommend they be mounted so not directly in the prop turbulence, so that would mean out to one side of the transom or the other, flush with the bottom, and inside the line of the boat sides I would expect. If you have done that, and is still does not work, then you have a problem in either the transducer or the head unit I suspect.

 

[AusCan]

I've mounted them on plywood hulls and had fairly good results. It may depend on the wattage of the transducer.

Mounting them anywhere where there is turbulence (air in water) will definitely give you problems.

 

[Larry M]

I'd mount it to a board that gets temporarily secured to the transom. Much easier to find the sweet spot for mounting if you can clamp the transducer before permanent mounting. Then use another mounting plate to the transom for the permanent mount....

We found that there is a definite sweet spot for the dinghy transducer. There's a big area for low speeds but it took a while to find the one spot we could go 15 to 20 knots with out loosing the signal. The board/clamp is a good idea. We used a suction cup and that was a PIA.

 

[twistedtree]

You might try doing you testing when the boat isn't moving. That way you can be sure the system is configured properly, etc. Then try it while moving, first slowly, then fast.

That said, lots of people have been having huge problem with Lowrence/Navico/Simrad gear and transducers. Lots of people having trouble getting it to work. Do a search on TheHullTruth.com to see the train wreck.

I had a Simrad NSS7 EVO (a cousin to the Lowrence) in my dinghy with a skimmer transducer. I couldn't get the depth to work. Sometimes it would work for a little while, but then stop the next time I used it. I pulled it out and sold it (it was only a few months old). Installed a Furuno GP1870 with skimmer transducer which, by the way, cost less even after I bought three different c-map chart cards. I powered it on and it worked perfectly the first time, and every time since.