[TG11] B744VL transducer question

[jgj252]

Several online sites (Defender, for example) have this transducer for sale, and there are two versions commonly shown:

Part no. A66092
Transducer AND high speed fairing
"Compatible with DSM300, DSM30 and CP300"

Part no. A26044
Just the transducer
"Compatible with ST40, i40, ST60+, i50, ST290, ST70* and i70*"

Are they different, electrically? Or is the difference in compatibility only because those would be the instruments commonly used (low speed vs. high speed)? Or...?

(I have an i40 BiData, and want to know if I can buy the A66092 and stand a chance of it working correctly. It's available from one source at a discount, whereas the A26044 is not.)

Thanks for any info,
Jim

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hello jgj252,

That's a good question. Not all Airmar transducers with the same model name are the same, and in some cases there are big compatibility differences internally. The model name really only describes the housing and gives some idea of the performance, it doesn't go much farther than that.

If you have a look at the Airmar Cross Reference (http://www.airmartechnology.com/xref.html), you'll see that there are 20 different B744VL models listed, and different wiring diagrams and acoustic element types for many of them.

It's somewhat safer using a fishfinder depth transducer with an instrument display than the other way round, but in this instance the Speed component will be your key problem: instrument transducers use a 3-wire speed signal, whereas fishfinder transducers a 2-wire speed. You can't convert between the two, so you'd see no speed data on the Bidata. You need to use a correct instrument transducer.

Regards,
Tom

[jgj252]

Thanks! Great info. I've ordered the instrument transducer just to be certain it will work.
Jim

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

No problem.