[TG] [TG11] RV100

[Ryan C2400]

In the last 2 trips out in my boat I have noticed at random times vertical line show up in the sonar and side view screens on my Axiom Pro. it appears that it's only the RV100 transducer showing this interference (if that's what it is). The TM265 that I have doesn't show the same lines. I have attached 2 photos of the "sonar" RV and and Medium chirp. I'm not sure if the RV100 has developed have some issues. When first install everything worked very well. it has only been in the last 2 months that I have noticed this appear. Also, the right hand of the side view has also been playing up and the only way I have been able to get it showing an image is to switch to the Realvision page on the Axiom, do a figure 8 and all of a sudden it works again.

any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hello Ryan,

Would you mind posting back images:

• In our diagnostic gain setup, 65/15/0, as described here.
• Of the SideVision channel so that we can see what that problem is?
  

When posting images, if possible please could you include the whole screen so that we can see things like the range scale?

Thanks,
Tom

[Ryan C2400]

Hi Tom,
Thank you for replying to my post. I have attached the original screenshots from the Axiom Pro. I have also marked on the screen where I would have done a sonar reset to see if it would clear up the image.

The next time I take my boat out i'll try and get more screen shots if it plays up again. Normally I keep all the sonar settings on Auto, and zoom in and out to see detail on the bottom.

Thanks

Ryan

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Thanks Ryan. I'll look forward to seeing images in our 65/15/0 setup if the problem recurs. It does indeed look like an interference signal, but I don't recall seeing one quite like that before so I will be interested to follow this through to a conclusion. It would also be good to see some of the SV problems if you can capture those too.

Regards,
Tom

[Ryan C2400]

Thanks again Tom,

If the interference shows up again on my next trip out I will try and get some more screen shot's of the different sonar pages, RV, SV, DV and the different chirp frequencies.

Not sure when the next trip out in the boat will be but send through something when I do.

kind regards

Ryan

[Ryan C2400]

(02-19-20 11:24 PM)Tom - Raymarine - Moderator Wrote:  Thanks Ryan. I'll look forward to seeing images in our 65/15/0 setup if the problem recurs. It does indeed look like an interference signal, but I don't recall seeing one quite like that before so I will be interested to follow this through to a conclusion. It would also be good to see some of the SV problems if you can capture those too.

Regards,
Tom

Hi Tom,

I finally got to get out in the boat and set the MFD settings to the 65, 15 and 0, I think I had to change the ping to full and colour to 100 as well.

Any way I have taken a heap of screen shots in Low, Medium and High Chirp, DV, Side vision. One thing I did notice when the setting were switched to manual I tried turning the engine off and there didn't seem to make any difference to the out come to the images so I kept trying at different speeds. Another thing I didn't do straight away was have depth on the page info. But the depth readings are always pretty accurate compared to the navionic charts.

I"ll be very interested to see what your thoughts are on the images. also I will attach some photo's of the 2 transducer locations tomorrow bit dark out side at the moment.

Kind Regards
Ryan

[Ryan C2400]

(02-19-20 11:24 PM)Tom - Raymarine - Moderator Wrote:  Thanks Ryan. I'll look forward to seeing images in our 65/15/0 setup if the problem recurs. It does indeed look like an interference signal, but I don't recall seeing one quite like that before so I will be interested to follow this through to a conclusion. It would also be good to see some of the SV problems if you can capture those too.

Regards,
Tom

Good Morning Tom,

I popped out this morning to take some photos of transducer locations if that may also help with making sure I get the most out of my Axiom Pro.

I have the RV on the port side and the TM265LM on the starboard side. I placed the TM265 in exactly the same location as the previous P58 that I had running with my A127. That little transducer was great at keeping the bottom in depths up to 100m with out issue. That's why thought the 1kw in the same location would be a winner for sure. Also I have run both transducer cables in the same location as the old P58. They are all loosely zip tied together with all the other power cables for the winch, outboard out put lead and additional wiring.

I'm really looking forward to trying to get these two tranducers producing a near perfect (should say perfect) image with the RVX.

Kind Regards
Ryan

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hello Ryan,

Good screenshots, thanks, just what I needed to see.
You have no aeration problem, this is not an issue with transducer mounting angle or location on the transom. There are about as few gaps in the sounder image at speed as you'll ever see on any system at those speeds. And you also have a nice low background noise level at speed on all channels except for the Low Chirp. There is a little cross-channel interference (the 'rain') in the Sonar channel, but that's not unexpected when running multiple channels at once like this. The only thing that would give any cause for concern in any of these is the background noise level in the Low Chirp when running at any sort of speed.

This noise level isn't the worst I've seen by any means, but it is bad enough to cause poor image quality even in shallow water at speed (it's bad even in the 14kph view), and as you got deeper and the bottom echo got weaker then it would be increasingly hard to see even the bottom echo, let alone bait or fish.

The noise can be coming from either the engine electrical system or hull/transducer vibration (actual acoustic noise), so the next step is to find out which of these are the case. Electrical interference can be coming from the charging system through power supply cabling, or could be radiated as airbourne noise and picked up on the transducer cabling. You can eliminate the first one by running the sounder temporarily on a completely independent battery, if possible. If the noise level is unchanged then the cause is either radiated electrical noise or vibration. You may be able to test for vibration by either temporarily placing a pad between the TM265 transducer and the transom (something like a sheet of rubber car floor-mat) to see if this reduces the level of clutter in the Low Chirp view at speed (be very careful to make sure that the transducer's still securely mounted and can't work from side to side and stress the mounting screws or come loose), or press something like a boat-hook with a pad on the end against the transducer in order to damp the vibration a bit when running at a bit of speed. Not easy I know, but if you press something against the transducer or isolate it and the background clutter in Low Chirp is much less then you've proven an acoustic noise problem at Low Chirp frequencies. If this were the case, the solution would be to step the transducer off the transom on an anti-vibration mount of some sort. I would suggest speaking with a shipwright to see what he might suggest there, to do the job and also be secure at high speeds.

Please let me know how you go with this. I would like to follow this one to conclusion.

Regards,
Tom

[Ryan C2400]

Thanks Tom,

I'll look into running a separate power wire just for the MFD from my second battery and see if that does clears things up a bit more. If it does happen to change anything I might look into trying to rig up the battery system so that it has the one battery for starting and one for the electronics. Not sure why new boats these days don't come out standard with that sort of a system. Only other concern i have, which i'm not sure if i did mention it earlier, is once i get over 150feet in depth i begin to loose bottom or it starts to break up at cruising speed. I will try and get some screen shots of that, but i have to head out to the Reef to get to that sort of depth. from the photos could you pick up anything obvious that could cause the issue with losing bottom in deeper water? say transducer angle. could it be tipped down too much at the rear and in deep water i could be missing the return signal. the RV high chirp does the same in deep water too.

thanks

Ryan

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hello Ryan,

Sorry, I probably didn't say so clearly enough - my comments were all about deep(er)-water performance. The sounder normally runs in Auto Gain where it continually adjusts the gain level in order to try show a clear picture and keep the noise clutter off the screen. If the noise level is too high then the system has to drop the gain so much in order to keep the noise off the screen that it ends up losing the bottom echo too. It's not that it can't hear the bottom echo but that it can't pick it out from amongst the noise, just like trying to have a conversation in a noisy pub. High background noise will always give poor performance, and the deeper the water (weaker the bottom echo) the worse the results are. I can't see any real noise problem in any of the channels except Low Chirp though, so I would expect you to get good bottom readings at speed in Medium Chirp - have you tried this?

The RV's high-Chirp Sonar channel is low power (compared to the TM265) and will always struggle more in deeper water than the TM265's channels will, that's normal.

Regards,
Tom