[TG] [TG11] AXIOM 9 TRANSDUCER SELECTION

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hello Mark,

There are a lot of sounder options to go beyond the depth range that the RV sounder system can cope with, with different price/performance levels. Here are a spread of options of increasing performance and price that will work with your existing system:

1. Fit a 600W, 50kHz/200kHz non-Chirp transducer into your display(s). You can go into the display that currently has the RV100 connected via a Y-cable, or if the second Axiom is also an Axiom 9RV (not just Axiom 9) then you can connect the second transducer to the second display. Doing the latter is preferable as using a Y-cable means you'd no longer have access to the RV100's Chirp Sonar channel.
In good conditions this should give you a reasonable image in 400m of water, and depending on the required transducer type is very roughly a $500 option.

2. Fit a 1kW non-Chirp, 50/200kHz transducer to the Axiom, as above. This is very roughly a $1500 option, and will give the same sort of image as above but with better clarity and sensitivity from the larger, higher-quality transducer.

3. The same transducer as (2) but with a black-box CP370 sounder module. This will give you a similar image to (2) but much clearer and with more sensitivity in deeper water (up to 800-1000m) and poorer conditions. This adds roughly $1000 to (2).

4. Use a CP470 1kW Chirp system. This or the big brother CP570 are the system of choice for game-fishermen. There are a lot of transducer options, but typical depth performance is well over 1000m with 1kW (2kW options are also available.) With 1kW, this will be something around the $2500 mark.

Since there are so many transducer options (power, frequency bands, beam-width/bottom coverage, mounting style and product compatibility) there isn't space to go into all of them here, but if you can give me or your local dealer an idea which of the above options you favour and what transducer mounting style your boat needs (transom like the RV100?) then we can narrow things down.

Regards,
Tom