Depth sounder not working

[amber jj]

This year from time we put the boat in the water the depth sounder has not worked properly. It is all over the board. Three thousand feet to five to blank and vise versa. It worked fine last season. It doesn't matter if you're moving or sitting still. Also the Robertson auto pilot tells me there is no data from GPS 1. The plotter is a Furuno nav net. I have tried wiggling any of the plugs and taking them out and spraying a contact cleaner on them.
Anybody else has had this problem?Bob

[DougSea]

Have you tried disconnecting the transducer to see what the unit does?

Inspect the transducer cable for wear or a sharp bend?

It's most likely a failure at the transducer or the cable.

[amber jj]

I will check that out this weekend. Thanks Doug. The Robertson autopilot also reads "no valid information from gps 1. "when I go into nav mode. The plotter shows my track but won't send info to the autopilot.
Strange both problems started first time out this year. It was fine last fall.
I did have my fuel tanks removed and replaced in the winter but that was all behind the engine room bulkhead. The only wire near the tanks is the rudder feedback.

[rebuckley]

Not sure if you fixed it, I don't have Furuno, but My Simrad was working up at the beginning of the season. Similar issues - no info from sounder, GPS failed to broadcast to the system... Turned out one of my "simnet" (basically sim rads version of an Ethernet wire) wires going from the GPS to the main hub was bad. Replaced the wire and the system came back on line.

[amber jj]

Reb how did you know the Ethernet cable was faulty?

[rebuckley]

Since I had multiple devices, hence multiple cords, I simply swapped one from the other station and it gave me a reading on the GPS. So I swapped it back and bought a new cord. I would assume (if you do not have multiples) it is something you could test and return. I am not sure if there is any cord tester - I did it by trial and error.

The thing to remember in some systems, if you have multiple stations, one is a "master" and one is a "slave" - that could have an effect on the signals too. I think the way to tell is if you know one unit has to be powered up for the rest to communicate that one is the master. Some of the newer systems have gotten away from this - it prevents loss of the system if a unit goes down.

[amber jj]

Thank you Reb.I do just have a single station unit.There is a cord that goes from the NavNet to the network sounder which the transducer connects to.All these connections I cleaned with a electronic cleaner and still had no luck.On the bright side on our Thanksgiving weekend on our last trip for the season the sounder did start to work again for about 10 minutes.That leads me to think it is a broken wire somewhere.I would think if it was the duecer or another electronic part it would just fail with no intermittency .I will take these connected wires off completely and double check them.The problem now is the boat is on the hard and I don't know if I should try the sounder while out of the water.Thanks again Reb for your reply.Bob

[rebuckley]

Hi Bob -

Also check your nav net connections - if they are like the ones on the Simrad, they are the little black "t's", maybe some are loose, or have some corrosion inside them? It does sound very similar to the issue we had. Unfortunately I do not know how to test the wires, as that would make the job easier