Nasa Clipper Depth Help Please

[paulingreece]

Hi everyone, need some help and advice with my Nasa Clipper depth, it is in an oil bath glassed to the hull, the old duet worked fine before it went wrong, i replaced it with a depth only gauge, refilled the oil with the recomended one and put the new sounder in. All i get is the depth going from 0 to 80 then 12 then 60, it's all over the place, doesn't matter what i try i cannot get a normal reading from it, so some help and advice from you lot would be great, thanks.

Paul.

 

[VicS]

Hi everyone, need some help and advice with my Nasa Clipper depth, it is in an oil bath glassed to the hull, the old duet worked fine before it went wrong, i replaced it with a depth only gauge, refilled the oil with the recomended one and put the new sounder in. All i get is the depth going from 0 to 80 then 12 then 60, it's all over the place, doesn't matter what i try i cannot get a normal reading from it, so some help and advice from you lot would be great, thanks.

Paul.

No Bubbles trapped under the transducer. ? Good connections for the transducer?

But the new instrument should have worked with the old transducer shouldn't it. Aren't they both the same Frequency ( 150kHz )

 

[paulingreece]

No Bubbles trapped under the transducer. ? Good connections for the transducer?

But the new instrument should have worked with the old transducer shouldn't it. Aren't they both the same Frequency ( 150kHz )

Hi VicS, no air bubbles, the old transducer had been cut and extended, so i used the new transducer and rerouted the cable so no need to extend it.

 

[VicS]

Hi VicS, no air bubbles, the old transducer had been cut and extended, so i used the new transducer and rerouted the cable so no need to extend it.

Probably worth contacting Nasa. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the new one is faulty.

If you still have it why not try the old transducer , just dangling over the side.

 

[Burnham Bob]

another vote for hanging the old transducer over the side - or if you can the new one. that should show if there is a fualt anywhere.

 

[BobnLesley]

Nasa Clipper depth

As VicS suggests, it may well be a faul with the unit.
Re: Installation - on our last boat our original died and the oil bath had also sprung a leak, rather than repair said leak I just stuck the transducer to the inside of the hull using a great big dollop of cheap silicone sealant - the theory was that if it didn´t work/position proved unsuitable, I could move it - it worked perfectly for five years (probably still is doing) and I´d more faith in that one than the whizz-bang, overpriced unit on our latest boat

 

[paulingreece]

Thanks for the replys, i will try hanging it over the side tomorrow and see what happens, think i still have the old transducer somewhere, so will try that as well.

 

[nigelm]

Could be electrical interference , you say the cable has been re - routed , is it near yr engine or alternator perhaps ? Or maybe some other appliance ?

I had a similar problem this year with a NASA clipper depth , the old unit was a NASA stingray unit and I wanted a matching set of clipper over the hatch , anyway , I was getting completely random depths and that ain't good on the east coast , I tried 2 different display and had the same problem so I thought it must be the transducer ( I was using the old one ) , I was going to fit a new one to see if that helped , then one day I was getting a problem with other electrical things like the water pump not working then 2 mins later it would
And lights behaving erratically .
Turned out to be a loose wire on the battery terminal ! , there are 3 cables clamped together and one had just come loose and must of been causing spikes in the voltage , cleaned and tightened the cable ends again and no more troubles , the depth is now stable too .

Might be worth a look

 

[KeithH]

I had a similar problem with my NASA duet a couple of weeks ago. Afrer working fine for about 6 years, it suddenly started reading 0.8 mtr. There was no change with depth, and I was not aground! So it was either transducer or instrument failure. Turned out to be a transducer failure. I tried a new one, and dangled that over the side, as others have suggested. That worked normally, so installed it properly.

One thing I noticed is that you can hear it work if you hold the transducer near your ear - not the 150kHz of course, but a tick-tick -tick of the pulses.

Also, the failed one showed the same reading if the transducer was in water or not. A working one shows a depth whne in water and it changes to "out" when out of the water.

 

[Fascadale]

I had problems with a Nasa duet depth sounder.

It was giving very silly readings so I cleaned up the transducer and dangled it over the side. It still gave silly readings so I bought a new transducer. It too gave silly readings when dangled over the side.

I phoned Nasa who said suggested I send in the head unit which I did. Nasa looked at it and quoted £35 for a repair. It works well now.

 

[paulingreece]

Hi everyone, thanks for the replys, never made it to the boat today, but will try all your suggestions in the morning, it occasionly shows out on the unit,
so i am leaning towards the transducer being broke, i repaired the lead on the old one today, so will try that as well. Thanks for all the replys, it's appreciated.

 

[Clyde_Wanderer]

On the same subject/instrument.
My unit reads out after anything deeper than 20-30mtrs but will accasionally flash up a dept value.
Generally ok in depths under 20mtrs.
There is adjustments in the engineer mode which I have tried but to no avail.
Any suggestions for above fault?

I was on a friends boat a couple wks ago, he has the same instrument.
When we came in to anchor we had a reading on the unit of 9-12 mtrs, we were in aprox 0.9 m.
Are these nasa units rubbish or why is there so much unreliable readings with them?
C_W