I came across a great deal on a Humminbird side scan fish finder and decided to try and figure out a way to make the transducer retractable and still remain in the Hobie transducer bay of my 2015 PA14. A friend had accomplished this on his PA, but I never got to see the details of his setup. I tossed around several mounting variations and found I was limited in what I want to do because of the lack of the parts locally and/or having to research online and hope they worked.
So I went to my local hardware, picked up 2 small springs and spent a few hours yesterday with a Dremel tool.
Using the existing Humminbird adapters, I removed the bottom alignment tabs. I also removed some of the material at the base of those plastic tracks to allow the transducer to drop as low as it could go. Since this is not a setup where you are locking the transducer "in place", I loosened up the nylon nut so that the assembly would slide up and down that plastic track smoothly.
Here's the finished unit prior to added the pull cord.
Here it is with the cord added.
Since I use 2 nylon pad eyes for my shock cord straps that hold any tackle boxes I use under the seat, I decided to use two of the screws to add 2 nylon guides for the robe to run through. I added one of the nylon "hooks" that I use for the tackle box straps at the front to hook the end of the cord on. Here's the completed assembly with the transducer deployed.
Here is the setup with the transducer retracted. Sorry for the grainy picture below the hull. There is not a lot of travel needed for the cord to pull the transducer up enough to be inside the assembly. I took the PA out on the lake and it worked like a charm!
Another benefit of having it spring loaded is that if you happen to hit anything, the transducer just pushes up into the well and then springs back down. It's not a fancy setup, but it works for me. Now to "cheat" as they say having a kayak with side scanning sonar.
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