New Chilli rig and sounder - pics

i felt the pain of my ski as I drilled 4 holes, 2 for the transducer mount and 2 for the cables at the front to run through.

But it turned out good in the end





the Chilli rig



The sounder

Hi Softbaiter ! well done now all you need is a baitboard and a few bait containers bolted to the bin !

hmmm, i like it!!

Might go buy a baitboard tomorrow and attach, what are the containers usually used for ?

Went for a test run on the ski, sounder works at low speeds but at 20kmh plus doesnt read, need to adjust it up a little so the transducer is out of the bubbles

Hi softbaiter . The containers are handy for lures , hooks ,sinkers soft plastics, traces and off course bait. The photo below is my sounder transducer mount it works fine at high speed, Cheers Hoot

Hi Hoot

what finder are you using?

Keith (swasy)

Hi This is my rig partly finished, has now got a high sided bait board on top. little plastic boxes can be stored inside or outside as required.

Cheers

Keith

Hi Keith I have a Humminbird 383 colour sounder with GPS and basic chart display its a removable unit and I bought it new of EBAY direct from a marine shop in Yankeeland got it for about half price of what I could one here for.

Cheers Hoot

Hi Hoot

they are about $1,100 in NZ how much USD was it? US/NZ exchange rate sucks at the moment...

Keith

Hi Keith looks like about $340 us dollars plus freight http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Humminbird-383c-Combo-fishfinder-GPS-chartplotter-383-c_W0QQitemZ200288394446QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item200288394446&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66%3A2%7C65%3A1%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318

Hi Keith I have another tip for you if you haven't already done it ! The fibreglass box lid gets a bit heavy particularly with a bait board fixed, in rolling sea conditions the lid can fall backwards and break the hinges or fall down and smash you fingers. I have a rope lanyard on each side that only lets the box lid go to about 70 degrees I then fixed one of those stainless steel hatch springs you get from the marine shop in the corner. When i push the lid up it locks into place simply push the spring and it comes down. The photo below shows what I mean i have since put one on each side as i found I sometimes accidentally knocked the spring when de hooking fish. Its also handy when you want to get a six pack of beer out of the ice on those camping trips.

Hi Hoot,

Thanks for that, how does the battery handle the extra current draw? have you considered dual batteries? I had dual batteries in my last boat and one was dedicated to the aux equipment...and the other the starter. I had a switch to switch over if ever either battery went flat. naturally both charge when motor running.

Cheers

Keith

Hi Keith I don't run dual batteries and I don't think power draw on the small sounder is really an issue. Having said that the dual battery idea is a great extra safety move after all you cant push start them can you ! Two of our crew do in fact run dual battery set ups this enables them to run lots of tricky things ! one of the guys even has a marine stereo system with dual waterproof speakers mounted into the fish box and a full mounted 25 watt vhf with a 4 foot fibreglass antenna ( not handheld ) if you can believe that.

would be interesting to see how many amps the alternator produces.... wheres me multimeter...

I will be running the sounder mainly when the engines on and have a switch close to the battery to isolate for when ski is not in use

Found a kick ass way to join and insulate wires too - solder and heatstrink as usual, but then slip about a 12mm bit of heatshrink over the whole thing, now get a hotglue gun and pump that stuff in from either end, the heat of the glue shrinks the heatshrink and squeezes a dollop out each end, and presto, fully sealed.