Transducer Confusion for e7D. Ugh!

[MaHoney]

Gentlemen, I feel your pain. I have been having trouble trying to determine which transducer will work the best with the e7D I just purchased. I have talked with West Marine, Airmar and Raymarine. What I have found is they really don't know. I was able to find out that the e7D is only capable of handling 600w of power. I was a little disappointed in that as there are units that handle 1, 2 and 3 Kw. But getting a stronger transducer than the unit can handle is a waste of money. I don't understand why they are so expensive. And I also don't understand why the manufacturers don't supply the best transducer for their unit...venting here. I ended up getting the Airmar B60 for Raymarine 16 - 24 degrees dead-rise. It is on order and should have it Tuesday. Hopefully I will have it installed for the weekend and I will post the results. I stayed away from a transom mounted transducer because of posts I found saying they don't work well with an Inboard engine but fine with outboards. Does anyone have any experience with those? Just so you know, I have a 28' Carver I use for Tuna Fishing in Maine.

[TheOffice]

You can use an Airmar DST 850 that is NMEA 2000 with a NMEA to NG cable and a couple NMEA Tees.

[Emmalina]

Originally Posted by atoll

maybe dave will chip in here!

but yes looks like a p79 with an adaptor will give you a fish finder.

i dont think airmar will link to raymarine gear

dunno about the alarm on the unit vs ext alarm

? Airmar make all the raymarine transducers !!

[Emmalina]

Airmar Products including data sheets
http://www.airmartechnology.com/2009...ch-results.asp

[evm1024]

Originally Posted by MaHoney

Gentlemen, I feel your pain. I have been having trouble trying to determine which transducer will work the best with the e7D I just purchased. I have talked with West Marine, Airmar and Raymarine. What I have found is they really don't know. I was able to find out that the e7D is only capable of handling 600w of power. I was a little disappointed in that as there are units that handle 1, 2 and 3 Kw. But getting a stronger transducer than the unit can handle is a waste of money. I don't understand why they are so expensive. And I also don't understand why the manufacturers don't supply the best transducer for their unit...venting here. I ended up getting the Airmar B60 for Raymarine 16 - 24 degrees dead-rise. It is on order and should have it Tuesday. Hopefully I will have it installed for the weekend and I will post the results. I stayed away from a transom mounted transducer because of posts I found saying they don't work well with an Inboard engine but fine with outboards. Does anyone have any experience with those? Just so you know, I have a 28' Carver I use for Tuna Fishing in Maine.

The B60 is a good unit - The B164 is a better unit. THe B60 can handle 600 watts and the B164 can do 1000 watts. The difference is many. For starters the B164 in about twice the cost of the B60. The B164 also is 2 to 6 time more sensitive than the B60. You can drive the B164 with 600 watts without any problem and the added sensitivity will allow you more depth.

Airmar more or less says for less that 400' or so just use the B60. If you want to know the depth above that the B163 "could" get a reading down to 1800' or more.

Regards