"Steve Lusardi" wrote in
:

Larry,
You have my interest. I see these transducers shipped new in boxes,
open circuit, sitting on shelves. I never saw a high voltage warning
label on any of them. What is the recommended method to test a
transducer? Steve



I'm sure the manufacturers would rather you just bought a new one. Not
sure what they'd "recommend" to test. Most problems I've ever seen are
caused by the cable rotting off them.

If the transducer is mounted in the hull, there should be enough noise
going by it to make some signal you could see on an oscope and you can
probably see some DC voltage if nothing is leaking....which would be
unusual in a bilge, I'm afraid.

Measure DC volts with an autoranging Digital voltmeter (They're 10M ohms
impedance) and if you get no reading, switch to ohms and hope it reads
infinity (open circuit), which is what the crystals are. Plug in a
scope and see if you see any noise at the crystal frequency, which is
too high to hear, of course. If you know someone else with the same
sonar nearby in the marina, have him fire up his sonar then look at the
oscilloscope on the test transducer to see if you can see his pinging
reflecting off the bottom. If you see nothing, take your sonar head
over and plug it into his transducer to see if your head is working. If
it is, bad transducer...or bad transducer cabling. it's not rocket
science.

Sorry I was late replying. I was sailing up 80W from S Fl bringing
someone's Jeanneau 40DS home with them...(c;