Hi Tickelish,Originally Posted by Tickleish
I see your from Redlands. Nice part of the world. Been through there several times sailing north for the winter. I'm from the NSW central coast, south of Newcastle (where it is 6 degrees this morning!) I'm building this power boat to get more into fishing and plan to trailer it up there in the winters.
You'd be welcome but it's probably a bit far for a sticky. I do plan to come up for a Ausfish M&G next winter. See you then!
Steve
I originally posted this in Electronics, but Chris69 suggested I put it here:
My wife gave me a Garmin 451S combo sounder/gps for the boat I'm building. It came with Garmin's 50/200 transom mounted transducer. I don't particularly like the idea of the transducer hanging off the transom but I really hate the idea of having a black cable running up a white transom on a brand new boat.
I've seen a few sites that suggest sitting the transducer inside the hull (oil bath, epoxied, etc.) My hull is fibreglass skins with balsa wood core. Does anyone know if an internal mounting such as this will work for me?
I am working on the transom and the motor wells now, so there would be time to do something to make this look better if I did mount it externally. Any ideas there to hide the cable?
Thanks for any help.
http://www.ausfish.com.au/vforum/sea...earchid=498517 have a read here Steve you might find what your looking for.
Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.
is it just me who gets this with most links ?
Great work Steve
My uncle built a 44 foot yacht next door to us so I know how much work goes in to such a project.
Shoot through hull transducers are not suppossed to work very well in cored/composite hulls but I know the 1kw wet box transducer worked well in Ymer (Brooksy's 34' Black Watch) which is balsa cored. Like me he has gone a through hull. I just put a tilted element transducer in my foam/balsa boat.
Hi Smithy you have to remove the core and epoxy fill the space so theres no air gaps to work.
One of the "glass"yachts Ive owned had a thru the hull tranducer .
This set up had a threaded skin fitting sikaflexed through the glass.The transducer was removable to prevent fouling from marine growth
Is there any reason other than hull integrity why this setup is not favoured by powerboaties??
Rando
Thanks, Timeout, Smithy & Rando,
At this stage, until I get done building, I'm trying to conserve my cash, which is why I'm willing to live with the 4" combo chartplotter and fish finder my wife got for me (other than the politics of trading in her gift.) Same with the transducer. The unit came with a transom mount 50/200 and I'm going to use that for awhile. It sounds like they are quite good in 30-80 metres of water which is where I'll probably spend a lot of time starting out. I just don't want this flippin' doohicky with its cable hanging off the back of the boat. I suppose its like anything else: if you're just starting out, you got a long way to go before spending lots of money on equipment makes any sense. I have no problem putting in a thru-hull. I'm half way there if I build a wet well as I have to take out the inside layer of glass and the balsa core anyway. I just want to get the whole boat done before I start upgrading.
Rando, I'm not sure. The more experienced guys seem to go for more power first. Certainly the conflict with the trailer is an issue for trailer boat owners. I've read most of the chats in this forum on the subject and $ is an issue that also pops up a lot.
There is shoot through where you mount it in a pool in the hull or epoxy it to the inside and there there are through hull tranducers. They use the through hull ones on tachts as they are usually also combined with a paddle wheel to you can also calculate current, sped through teh water not just a GPS speed over ground. They are removable so you can pull them out when moored and clean them as even algea or slime changes their accuracy and you also do service kits on the occasionly.
All tranducers require a solid ( no air) area. As mentioned above you can "panel a section " by using solid glass ( no core , no air bubbles) and this is what some manufacturers use on a particular place on their boats. Guess you could vac bag a small area of solid glass without core so you have all the options in the future.
Some tranducers must be wet boxed ( they get hot or damaged so I'm told) and and others ( usually called puck) can be just dry mounted to the inside of the hull. I've seen small transom mount ones epoxied and even sika to the inside of hulls and they still do Ok but are down a bit on power but often give constant readings at all speeds as they are mounted in areas of such clean waterflow and no water airation.
Send a email to garmin so you now your options with that unit and tranducer.
There may be a puck avaliable for that unit and you just mount them on a bed of epoxy with no air bubbles over your small solid glass panel.
you can bed your existing skimmer transducer in some epoxy an the floor of your hull no problem. Just make it a slow mix and make sure there are no bubbles. So long as the attenuation is uniform it'll be sweet. Lowrance have instructions fo r this for their skimmer transducers
Cormorant, myusernam, thanks. I will talk further to Garmin, but unless they advise me different a plan is starting to take shape: I'm going to create a nice, clear epoxy area in the stern of my boat in an area of least turbulence. I'll make this flat and level. I'll size this area so that it will acommodate any size transducer (for later) and will also handle a wet box if I need to add one later. When I get the boat in the water, I'll just see which way to mount the Garmin puck that produces the best result and also leaves me room to move in the future.
Thanks everybody for your advice.
Steve
Fed, I've had your observation on the curved supports for my duck board in the back of my mind for a couple weeks. On second thought, I ended up agreeing with you that in adverse conditions, the stern of the boat could come down on or through a wave and create problems for my fancy curvy supports. Since I am getting closer to turning the boat over, I still had time to fix this up. So, I cut 'em off and notched the support so I could add a 'doubler to provide the needed support. This looks like a better solution.
Thanks for your help.
Looking good Steve, as far as your transducer goes I don't think there's anywhere to mount it on the transom unless the pictures are deceiving and there's enough space between the pod and the side of the hull.
You may be stuck with shoot through the hull type.
I finished building the engine pods on the upside down hulls and immediately started fairing. Before turning the boat right-side-up, I want to apply 4-5 coats of neat epoxy to the under water sections, apply Copper Shield antifouling up to 75mm above the water line and paint the tunnel. All those areas need to be faired first.
I had my mate Phil in for the past 4 days to help with the fairing. We've done the most physically demanding first fairing cycle which involved troweling on a fairing bog (epoxy+microspheers) and then attacking it with a torture board, a 2-3 ft. long 40 grit sandpaper backed flexible piece of timber. There's a reason they call it a torture board and anyone thinking of building a boat should spend a day with one before going ahead. (They say building a boat is 70% sanding, by the way.)
Oh well, the hard part's done now, including a trip to the physio. But I'll probably still spend a week filling in the left over low spots, doing the fine sanding in the corners, and then going over everything with finer sandpaper. That will be good enough for the parts that will be anti-fouled since I'll be rolling on 4-5 coats of the copper heavy epoxy. For the tunnel and the underside of the bridge deck, I intend to put on 3 coats of high build primer wet on wet and then do finer and finer sanding, prior to rolling and tipping this area with Sterling linear polyurethane.
Looking real good there steve,and your a better man tham useing torture board with 40grit,80grit 50mm wide and 800mm long was hard enough for me,are you going to chemicaly bond the 4to5 coats of epoxy barrier coating or just sand inbetween coats,cheers chris.
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