buying a plotter

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chriswilliams29

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i am fitting out my boat and want some advice on which plotter to buy.
from what i have read it wont be a colour one as some writers say not very good definition.
so black and white but which one, i had a garmin 230 on my last boat but most other plotters seem to have come down in price so are they anygood
 
I wouldn't rule out colour - Raymarine have an excellent colour screen, easily seen in bright daylight.

But if you want advice, why not call Dave Wellcome of Raymarine (he's in the engineering section and spends time with the MBM Cruise Club as their engineering support 'man') and ask his opinion.

02392 693611 and dial 1614 when the horrid auto answer machine takes the call!

Piers du Pré
MBM Cruising Club enthusiast
www.dupre.co.uk/fsPlaydeau.htm
 
My colour Garmin GPSMAP 220 is excellent, an enormous improvement over the monochrome version GPSMAP 210. I don't know what the reviewers were looking for, but there is no way that I will be going back to mono.

However, there is a fly in the ointment. All G-chart Garmin products are obsolete with the introduction of the BlueChart technology. This is highly annoying, as my 220 is less than two years old and I own quite a few G-charts. I have asked Garmin Europe how long these products will be supported and they will only say that they cannot guarantee anything. So, having been an enthusiastic Garmin user for a number of years, I am now actively looking for an alternative. I suggest that you loook for a plotter that is supported by a general cartography supplier, e.g. Navionics, which should prevent you from being tied to a single equipment manufacturer.
 
Don't rule out color, makes a big difference in readability. There used to be a problem with color beeing effected by bright sunlight, and you needed to shade the display a bit, but even that has been overcome with the new SunView screens.

The second thing that matters a lot is size. If you can afford it, go for at least 10".
It allows you to see more of the whole scenario around you, without zooming in and out which is usually slow.

I have a Simrad with 10.4" display mounted behind the windscreen under the dodger, and if I'm about 5 ft away when behind my wheel, I can still read it quite well.
 
I wouldn't say that problems using a colour plotter in bright light have been overcome : they've been greatly improved, but (especially in bright cloudy conditions) they(some?) still darken v.noticeably and might need a hand to shade them if mounted outisde.

I recently got a chandlers to rig up a long lead to test the new navman plotter outdoors on a bright cloudy day....and the darkening was very noticeable, although according to them, testing it indoors (with a spotlight standing in for the sun), made it look better than ever.

Having said that, later noticed an option to change the colour palette to "sunlight" colours,which they hadn't used...this may improve things,it certainly imprived the darkening I got indoors when not viewing from directly ahead.

I'll still likely get a colour one,despite that : (allowing for the above),they're so much easier to read,imo, especially in the smaller sizes.
 
Not sure we are talking about the same screen.

The SunView displays I mentioned (made by Hitachi I believe) work both ways: classic, with backlight going through, or with the backlight turned off, lighted by reflected sunlight. They get brighter he brighter it gets. The only thing I would critizise on them is that at dark, when lrun by backlight they are a little less crsip than the conventionell ones.

The previous generation so called daylight usable displays worked with just very powerful backlight, which works with some shade on it, but draws quite some power.

You sure we are talking about the same thing. The ones I have seen don't darken in sunlight as you mention.
 
same thing ? I wouldn't know really. But I've read that the garmin 176C is good in sunlight and not so clever in bright cloud, and I've seen the navman 5500 personally & found the same thing. (TFT daylight viewable lcd,according to the blurb) ( I'll likely still get one ,when the integrated antenna model arrives)

I didn't say it darkened in sunlight.
 
Could be the same. I saw a Simrad SunView display when the yard was fitting one to a neighbor boat. That was at bright sunshine and looked very good. I also asked them to see it down in the cabin, and there I found it was less clear than my same unit of older generation.
Mine has a lot of backlight power, so it works quite well, but needs some shade which I get through one of these tubes they sell to stick onto the device. But I would definitely have chosen the SunView for the outside station had it been available.
 
Talking about charts

Visiting the local boat fair some time ago, I was on the lookout for a chart plotter. Having had an ancient Garmin 50 with no trouble so far I naturally headed for the Garmin stand. They had these new BlueChart thingies; when I asked them to zoom into the lower corner of Sicily some of the favourite little inlets weren't shown at all - Marzamemi just had the name shown inland.
On the other hand the Navman 5000 / 5500, using C-map cartridges, zoomed in with all the details even the correct configuration of the pontoons at the various marinas. I postponed buying.
I would like to stick with Garmin because they are well established and, so far, reliable. The same might be true of Navman for all I know.
Question: is what I noticed about the BlueCharts vis-a-vis the C-Map cartridges an isolated case or have you people in the north had similar experiences?
Fair Winds!

Wally
 
Re: Talking about charts

The resolution on G-charts varies quite a lot. In ports it is certainly possible to get down to pontoon level, whereas elsewhere anything less than 1 mile across the screen pulls up the "overzoom" message. The resolution is very much tied to the availability of local large scale charts, so for instance the detail available on my G-charts of Holland, France and UK is very much more than on the one of Mallorca. Apparently this is even more marked for the road maps, where UK data goes down to street names wheras on maps of several European countries only the more major roads are shown.

However, as far as I can understand, whereas G-charts were based on Navionics technology, same numbering system except for the first letter "G", the BlueCharts are based on Tsunamis technology, so maybe some resolution changes apply.

Have a look at http://joe.mehaffey.com/ You will find a huge amount of information there about everything to do with GPS.
 
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