J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment Depth meter replacement

I just bought Twilight Zone and need to replace the original 1979 Signet depth sounder. What are the most popular replacements? The current Signet model SL172 looks a little old fashioned.

I went with the TackTick and eventually replaced all the old instruments. They use standard Airmar transducers that are used by most of the equipment suppliers. The advantage of the TackTick systems are you can mount them anywhere on a flat surface or a bracket. They expand easily for future additions (e.g. speed, wind, NMEA interface to other instruments and GPS). The down side is they are pricey.

ps - Congrats on your J/30 purchase. I just sent you an email

On Vee Jay 2 this summer rehab I decided to go with a Garmin 440S gps+sounder ... standard airmar transducer, tied into new DSC radio for the digital distress calling system.

The boat had the arm ... but I mounted the radio on the arm as well ... because I spent too much money having the old holes in the bulkhead filled in and didn't want to recut.

Now the question is where I am going to mount a magnetic compass to comply with class rules without cutting a new hole in bulkhead.

And I have to keep reminding crew not to hook the spin and main halyards around the arm.

CV:

I just bought the Garmin 440S as well. It's going to replace my B & W Garmin 180. The 180 has a larger screen. How has the 440S size worked out for you? I, too, have my GPS mounted on a swing arm. My dealer said that if I would prefer a larger screen, he would completely refund my 440S purchase price. So, are you happy with the screen size?

Bob Rude
Mmmmm

Mount your magnetic compass in the Nav station. Use velcro so if the digital one fails you use it on deck.

+1

re: 440 and 440s
I have the 440 on Vee Jay in Naples on an arm and that was decent enough last winter. I wanted to mount the radio on the arm too, and there is just so much you can do on the arm. So the 440 was the least expensive way to go for that size screen. It replaced a Garmin 162 and that was a real upgrade as well. In Naples we can touch bottom in some parts of the Gordon River at a Low Low and the raymarine depth was there anyway and has a bigger display. I do waypoint the bounces when I can, and the 440 does the job fine ... you may have to zoom in a bit earlier than a larger screen but you only have so much room on the arm.

Vee Jay 2 here in Newport I had to toss the KVH equipment and since I use the GPS and radio 99% of the time it seemed the most logical thing to use the 440S for depth. I won't know till next season when 2 goes in if I am ok with the depth displayed on the gps screen ... but around Newport it is rare for me to go under 20 ft. I didn't bother with a new paddle wheel speedo as I think they are a pain in the neck.

RE: mounting the compass with velcro ...
Would that be considered the fixed mounting that the class rules require?

Don't buy Navman. My Navman set-up (bought by the previous owner) has failed after a couple of years. The recommended replacement around these parts seems to be Raymarine.

My navman set is working fine. The only problem was in the initial setup. Fortunatly one of my crew is an avionics genius. It took him a couple of hours to get everybody talking to each other. That was after folling the instructions.They are at least two or three years old. Fair warning, the biggest error in instructions was to use the other wire for the NAV 0183 signal instead of the instructed one.

I concur with don't buy NAVMAN. I bought a NAVMAN wind instrument and the sending unit failed after 1 year. The display would fog up on the inside under humidity. David Bows had the same instrument on Mallorca and had the exact failure and display problem I had on Rhapsody.