Speaker Iron Fowling �

[Brad Plohman]

This won’t be a concern to many, however something I wanted to make my fellow D2 water hunters aware of.

I typically don’t use my remote’s speaker but wanted to do a little testing with it this fall, and it didn’t work. If you put your ear right up to it and turned the volume right up, you could just faintly hear it. I do use the red plug so I tried blowing on it to try and reset it, as outlined in the manual, but to no avail. I ended up sending it in for repair and the diagnosis was iron/black sand jamming up the speaker.

I almost exclusively hunt fresh water and my remote is submerged probably 75% of the time. I’ve never considered the beaches I hunt to be high in black sand but you do see it on occasion and if you find something magnetic or have magnets in your scoop, they will be covered in black ‘filings’ over time. Much of the time the beaches I hunt are a clay sand mix and often I have to break it up by hand so that typically puts my remote in close proximity to the sediment cloud.

I’ve been trying to think of the best way to prevent this. It might mean using a floating sifter more often, but even then there’s a large sediment cloud in the water. What I’m going to try (picture) is a piece of waterproof tape across the grill of the speaker blocking off all but two holes on the top and two holes on the bottom (some are dummy holes). That should greatly reduce the water exchange to that compartment. I don’t want to block off the entire grill because water will find a way to get in and won’t drain out. Another thought was a ‘decoy’ magnet mounted near the speaker grill?

Does anyone have any other ideas?

[jimwasson]

Good caution, especially for water and beach hunters.

Sinclair posted about this earlier. He uses a sticker cut from a roll to cover the speaker grille to prevent this. Even though I haven’t started water hunting, I have started doing the same thing since I see a lot of black on the beaches that I hunt.

I bought a roll of clear T-rex repair tape on Amazon for about $14 and cut a swatch to cover the grille holes and the door edges. So far so good.

[Sinclair]

Yes, I did the same thing and previously did with my Equinox.
I covered all holes. No problems so far, but I don't dive. Make sure to use a sturdy tape with good adhesive.
 

 

[Brad Plohman]

6 hours ago, Sinclair said:

I covered all holes. No problems so far, but I don't dive. Make sure to use a sturdy tape with good adhesive.

I like that even better, I'll give that a try, thanks.

[Sinclair]

Next time I'll make it exactly as big as the cover. Cutting plotter or laser cutter would be nice - or just make the sticker bigger, carefully cut along the cover edge and take off the excess.