300 Dancer Depth Sounder Problem on Plane

[kneilson]

My boat is an '06 300 dancer. the problem that i am having is that l am losing depth reading on both my smart-craft and raymarine sounders when i get up on plane.

The transducer for the smart-craft is in the center of the keel in stock position. The transducer for the Raymarine is to port of the smart-craft transducer by about 16" on the same lateral axis.

The dealer has tried to smooth the fiberglass in front of the transducers to "clean" the water over the transducers to no avail.

Any other 300 owners having similar problems out there? Anybody have some thoughts on the problem?

The dealer is scratching his head on this one. I would like to hare some reading when YB on plane just to give me the warm fuzzies!

 

[driller]

i have an 06 290 and have had problems with depth readings on plane. the info is coming from the smartcraft display and i get no or erratic readings on plane from time to time.
i was thinking it was related to the chop on the water messing with the transducer but i do not know for sure.maybe this helps.
driller

 

[jrirvine1]

I have the same setup as you and occasionally got some blinking, flickering and general confusion with the readings, but the depth readout never quit. The “cure†was to turn off one of the sonar’s. Apparently, the transducers may have been receiving too much information with both transmitting at the same time and didn’t quite know what to do with it. Perhaps turn off the Raymarine sounder in the setup options and see if the smartcraft sounder works better and visa versa.

 

[Alex D]

My boat is an '06 300 dancer. the problem that i am having is that l am losing depth reading on both my smart-craft and raymarine sounders when i get up on plane.

The transducer for the smart-craft is in the center of the keel in stock position. The transducer for the Raymarine is to port of the smart-craft transducer by about 16" on the same lateral axis.

The dealer has tried to smooth the fiberglass in front of the transducers to "clean" the water over the transducers to no avail.

Any other 300 owners having similar problems out there? Anybody have some thoughts on the problem?

The dealer is scratching his head on this one. I would like to hare some reading when YB on plane just to give me the warm fuzzies!

My Faria depth sounder on our Four Winns 248 Vista would do exactly the same and often. Running in 150 ft.+ water, it would go down below 10 feet. usually to 4.5 feet and the alarm would sound freaking me and my wife out afte we ahd once had a soft grounding with the skeg and prop. Running at displaceemnt speed that never happened, so we finally gave up on the sounder and relied on the lake maps. Our 340DA sounder never ever had any issues like that ...

 

[comsnark]

Hmmm. My sounder quits when coming on and off of plane. Due to turbulence I suppose.

BTW: Blinking means "no reading" generally. Pretty scary when you run in a 5' bay, and all of a sudden your depth is a BLINKING 1.5' :smt101

I wonder how far behind the bow wave the depth finder is when you are on plane? I wonder if being 2' further back would solve this problem.

 

[Robski97]

I dont have good news for u . I had a 02 300 and they installed three additional hockey pucks to try and find a good location . They never did and i sold the boat in 03.

Sorry...

Rob

 

[Stray Cat]

I have the same boat with only 1 transducer connected to Smartcraft Systemview. The only time I get a confused reading is when I am in shallow (< 5 ft.) water with a grassy or mud bottom.

Do you get a good reading out of both transducers / displays at low speed?

From my bass boat days, if I had my indash flasher and my Lowrance graph on at the same time, the transducers echoed on one another and gave false readings.

As already mentioned, shut the Ray unit down and see what happens.

 

[kneilson]

Fix stumbled upon!

Thanks for all the input...

As it turns out, the problem appears to be related to having both transducers running when on plane... they were interefering with each other causing both of them to go offline.

I found this out by accident (having not read the reply's over the past two weeks) when I had my Bilge EIM moved to another location by the dealer (see Generator/Bilge blower thread). They apparently neglected to reconnect the Raymarine transducer in the process. Low and behold, my smartcraft reading was working on plane perfectly. So either we will try relocating the raymarine transducer to another location to eliminate the cone-interference, or I will simply shut one of the transducers off when on plane.

Again, thanks for the suggestions!