Share Your Innovations

[Cbad Mike]

Originally Posted by FishNinjaY

I wondered if anyone ever tried running the transducer to a spot on the bottom near a scupper hole, but then used a heat gun to soften the area, and mold inward an indentation, with a glass bottle? This way the transducer would be recessed and not scrape on the sand or ground? Any thoughts?

Originally Posted by Baitman

Two reasons not to do that heat gun trick.
One is it won't work WRONG Memory will push back to original shape WRONG,,, only with distortion WRONG.
Two, you'll weaken the area WRONG. (Because you can re enforce the area to be actually stronger)

YES I have done this. I had a busted up kayak that I molded the underside of it for a transducer. I got the idea and then practiced on the busted up kayak. It is tricky but possible. I did a total of 4 good and workable indentations. I did not do them near the scupper holes because if it got Fd up it would be too hard to repair. I used a blow torch and a heat gun. NO, memory does not push it back into shape as stated by Baitman. It takes some time because you definately dont want to rush doing it. I decided not to do it on my Malibu only because I dont think it would make a difference since I use an Eagle Cuda FF. If I had a better FF like the Lowrance 5 then I would have done it. If its something that your really considering contact me. I will not do it for you because I dont want to be responsible for your kayak but I will explain exactly how I did it, and did it correctly.

Mike

[dsafety]

On a recent vacation to the Caribbean, I saw something that might be of interest to those who fish at night. One of the tourist adventure places took a bunch of clear kayaks and glued some 12V LED Strip lights to the edges of the yaks. They would then take tourists out to check out the night life on the local reefs.



The kayaks could be seen for miles and, according to some people I spoke with who went out on one of these things, the lights worked quite well when it came to illuminating the reefs below.

I did a Google search and discovered that these strip lights are available from dozens of sources in many color temperatures, illumination angles and in both waterproof and regular versions. It would be interesting to see if this idea could be adapted to our kayaks and whether they would prove to be useful out on the open water.

Someone should give this a try.

Bob

[FishNinjaY]

I would think that much white LED lighting would mess up your night vision. Sucks for fishing perhaps, but might be good for sightseeing? Cool pic.

[StinkyMatt]

Can you say Squid light?

[tacklebox]

Originally Posted by StinkyMatt

Can you say Squid light?

Squid light.

[silentviper]

I've wanted to do something of this sort for my PA14 and mount some strips of led lights underneath the mounting rails as deck lights, i guess you could mount some on the outside of the hull and make all kinds of light show effects (Boat Parade anyone?)

benefit of this stuff is it's waterproof and if you cut it and solder wires in to patch it i heard all you have to do is epoxy it. http://www.amazon.com/300LEDs-multi-...ef=pd_sbs_lg_4

[dsafety]

So who will be the first on the West Coast to give this a try?

You can splice different colors together, (they make red and green for the bow). There are versions that send the light straight out or at a 90 degree angle downwards. There are multiple color temperatures available ranging from the cool, blue/white to warm which is yellowish like a candle flame.

The ones I saw were attached to the hull with something similar to Goop. Since the strips are flexible, almost any adhesive will probably work.

If you really want to get innovative, you could have multiple circuits. One for colored bow and stern lights. Another with a down facing, bait attracting array and a third to just light your way and make your little kayak highly visible at night.

The really cool thing is that since these are LED, they hardly use any juice at all. A full array of lights could run all night, probably multiple nights on a single charge.

If this catches on, I can see the possibility that some kayak manufactures might consider adding recessed mounting grooves, to allow for easy installation, as a feature included in future models.

Bob