Charplotter & Radar Combo

[pjf]

Hi,

I am looking for advice on where and which is best to purchase, ideally would like the following:

Complete package including all cables, mast support/bracket, Radome and display circa 7"

Low power draw, not looking for a range beyond 18-24 miles and to be able to operate plotter or radar separately

Second part of my question is where to mount display on a tiller steered boat, perhaps on coach roof under the spray hood with a means of detaching when not in use?

A lot of the information I can find seems to be a little fragmented and difficult to piece together. Your advice would be much appreciated to help with this next purchase.

Thanks

 

[maby]

Simrad or Lowrance Broadband would seem to fit the bill pretty well - low power consumption and excellent close-in resolution at the expense of long-range performance.

Don't think I understand the "operate plotter or radar separately" - you don't have to have the radar on in order to use the plotter, but you will not get anything useful out of the radar without the plotter - it is the display screen.

Not sure about the feasibility of detaching the plotter when not in use - you will have two thick cables going into the back - I guess you just have to protect them from the weather when they are not connected.

 

[pvb]

There's probably not much to choose between the major brands - Raymarine, Simrad, Lowrance, etc - so final decision may be influenced by how easy you find them to operate. It's well worth going to look and play with them before choosing, some models are much easier to use than others. Go for the best screen resolution you can find, this will result in a crisply detailed image. I'd also suggest you look at getting a bigger screen than 7". To go up to a 9", 10" or even 12" screen won't cost a huge amount more in percentage terms, and will make it much more user-friendly. All the displays can show the radar alone, the chart alone or the radar overlaid on the chart (which is very useful).

There's no problem fitting a mounting bracket under the sprayhood and simply unplugging the display when you leave the boat. Mine's installed like this and works fine. I just put the cable ends in a self-seal sandwich bag when I take the display off.

There are many dealers willing to discount, but I've found that JG Tech ( www.jgtech.com ) have consistently keen prices. Importantly, they are also extremely knowledgeable and will give you sound advice.

 

[jimi]

I managed to pick up a garmin 750 chartplotter & garmin radome relatively cheaply and am pleased with it

 

[Skylark]

On my last boat, in 2010 I had a Lowrance HD7 and an HD8 fitted at the wheel and the nav station respectively. This was 3rd generation broadband radar. It has selectable radar only screen and radar overlay chart (AIS, too).

I had warranty issues and it took several months to resolve.

My new boat has Simrad 4th generation broadband radar on 12 inch screen. It also has pages to select radar only or radar overlay.

I've had warranty problems with it which I think (hope) has been resolved but will not now know until next season.

 

[derekh]

I have a Raymarine e80 with 18" raydome surplus to requirements. If you want more info pm me .

 

[pjf]

Many thanks to all for the information and thanks Derekh but I think I will go for a new package. I like the idea of broadband, mainly due to the reduced emissions, weight, power draw and good close up visibility.

Will give some feedback once I have it up and running

 

[Neeves]

We went through the exercise you have done and came to the same conclusion. I would suggest you look at the B&G Zeus unit, we have the Simrad NSS 7 inch - but the Zeus, now available, offers so much more 'sailing' software. We are happy with the 3G and am not convinced the 4G is that much better (and it uses a bit more power). The 7 inch is fine, not as good as 8 inch or 12 inch, but cheaper.

You will need to wire a fluxgate compass into the system.

Wiring is dead easy, except for the radar cable, which has the flexibility of a broomstick. So other than getting radar cable round corners its all plug and play.

Our screen is removable from the cabling - its not a big issue. You might want to have the cabling long enough that it can reach wherever you place the bracket but is then long enough to tuck away under the coachroof when you are not using the boat. The sockets are meant to be waterproof - but we protect them as much as possible.

We also have the WiFi unit for an iPad - its quite useful if you are down below at the galley and want to keep watching radar etc.

Good luck

Jonathan

 

[ditchcrawler]

In terms of fitting I had a Lowrance plotter fixed on a bracket clamped to the rail at the side of the companionway just under the canopy.
I used a Ram bracket.They do all sorts of fixings.www.ram-mount.co.uk

 

[pjf]

Thanks again, the ram mount site gives me the idea of possibly having it mounted on a swing arm that can be swung to face out of companion way or back in against the internal bulkhead when down below...not sure though.

Neeves, thanks for the endorsement of my conclusion. Might be a daft question but why would I need to install a fluxgate compass into the system?

 

[Anwen]

I have a B&G 3G dome and Zeus plotter and confirm that it is very good. Better than the Raymarine system I had on my old boat. Apart from the much lower power consumption, the Simrad/ B&G/ Lowrance system has a very fast start up time. You'll need the compass for the MARPA system to work properly, but if you already have an autopilot linked to a NMEA2000 backbone, this should work with the radar. It does for mine, but the autopilot is Simrad, so you'd expect it to.

 

[maby]

I have a B&G 3G dome and Zeus plotter and confirm that it is very good. Better than the Raymarine system I had on my old boat. Apart from the much lower power consumption, the Simrad/ B&G/ Lowrance system has a very fast start up time. You'll need the compass for the MARPA system to work properly, but if you already have an autopilot linked to a NMEA2000 backbone, this should work with the radar. It does for mine, but the autopilot is Simrad, so you'd expect it to.

Be careful of mixing Simrad plotters with Raymarine autopilots - I made that mistake. They simply do not play nicely together and each manaufacturer blames the other.

 

[Anwen]

So much for standards!

 

[Neeves]

As answered you'll need the fluxgate for MARPA but I think its also a more accurate way (it might even be necessary) of determining north. I spoke with a number of the electronic fitters here (that would usually supply systems as well as fit) and to a man (there are no women) they hate mixing systems. It is usually relatively easy to feed a different manufacturers data into another system and generate a display, so you can feed in wind and get wind speed correctly on the display, but getting one system to process data from another system, which you might need for an autopilot, is apparently more difficult.

Many systems cannot be used on another manufacturers system anyway - Broadband being the classic example. It is impossible to display Simrad's Broadband on a Raymarine display - the soft ware is simply not there. You can buy the software easily from Simrad and use on a PC but the software costs (hence use of proprietary waterproof displays).

We have an old Raymarine, 13 years now, system, autopilot, fluxgate, wind and old chartplotter which we have left and not tried to mix with the new Simrad chartplotter, radar and depth. So we have 2 slightly overlapping but independent systems. As the Raymarine drops out, we have recently lost depth, we will add to the Simrad system. The Simrad and Raymarine (and I think Garmin) depth are all the same at the cheaper end, all from Airmar (I think that's the name). The depth plug, that fits in the back of the Simrad/B&G display is large (when you consider what it does).

Be very careful when you measure up. Cable runs are much longer than you think, what looks like 5m turns out to easily be 7m. It is well worth spending lots of time measuring and re-measuring.

it is definitely unconventional but we used a well lashed ladder (and harness) to fix the radar scanner and feed the cable. Its not difficult but very time consuming and you need a lot of bits and pieces to fit the bracket and scanner. Going up and down a ladder is much quicker and easier than having someone man a winch. But you will be able to fit the whole system yourself - the instructions are full and simple.

We have our display on a custom arm, we can see it from the galley, saloon table and we have another bracket up at the helm - but we need an extra 0.75m of cable to move it about - but it works and is cheaper than 2 displays

 

[Ian_Rob]

I am also looking into installing a radar for the new season. The current plan is to have a B&G 4G with a Zeus Touch 8.

Having spoken with the marine electronics specialist who installed the original equipment, I understand that the existing Raymarine Tridata and Wind instrument can be interfaced with the Zeus without too much of a problem (so I assume that the added bonus of the B&G 'SailSteer' software on the Zeus will also fully work).

However, this plan may fall apart if the existing Raymarine ST6002 Autopilot/Smart Pilot S2 can't be interfaced with the Zeus but assuming that it can be made to work, my current thinking is to replace the E80 chart-plotter at the helm with the Zeus. Unfortunately, the cut-out for it in the Navpod is smaller than the E80 so there is another issue there to be resolved.

The Raymarine E80 chartplotter is networkable and will apparently display the Zeus content as a repeater. However, whilst I could re-use it below at the nav-station it will cause problems if anyone tries to use it to enter data. Thus, I'm minded to sell it (perhaps together with the Navpod if I can't find, modify or make a replacement top). That might then partly fund a WiFi interface that would allow the Zeus to display on and be controlled by an iPad anywhere on board.

At the moment I am leaning towards the Zeus Touch 8 over the Touch 7 because the screen is a bit larger but also because I'm told, having a data bar display it has better MARPA functionality. The downside is that it is twice the cost. Hopefully, I will be clearer as to whether it is worth the extra after the Boat Show in January.

 

[Neeves]

Ian,

if you are going B&G 4G, Zeus and WiFi then the iPad screen is (in terms of the 7 inch Zeus) huge. MARPA is not much use here (we have minimalist commercial traffic) so its not an issue. The iPad reproduces exactly what the, in our case, NSS screen shows, only bigger. Anything you can do on the NSS/Zeus you can do on the iPad - its just like a monster repeater, except it will drive the whole system - but its, obviously, not waterproof. In fact the iPad is so susceptible to water I have this cynical belief we are part of the profit margin (repeat business) - no wonder they do not have a waterproof version.

You cannot, or could not (maybe they have unlocked the system?) drive the autopilot from the iPad.

If you can keep the iPad dry then the need for the bigger screen diminishes - but we do not need MARPA - and data display bar might be more critical for you.

The iPad is really powerful if you are on long passages as you can be in your berth, offwatch, and see exactly what is happening and (disconcerting for the crew on watch) interrogate the system.

Jonathan

 

[maby]

I ...
However, this plan may fall apart if the existing Raymarine ST6002 Autopilot/Smart Pilot S2 can't be interfaced with the Zeus but assuming that it can be made to work, my current thinking is to replace the E80 chart-plotter at the helm with the Zeus. Unfortunately, the cut-out for it in the Navpod is smaller than the E80 so there is another issue there to be resolved.

....

If it is important to you that the current autopilot should work with the new Zeus gear, do a lot of research first before committing. My (painful) experience is that Raymarine and Simrad will not reliably work together and I'm told that there is a lot of commonality between the firmware in all the Navico gear. About once in every five attempts, the plotter would drive the autopilot, but it seldom managed to keep it up for more than a few minutes. The networking was fine - all devices saw each other at all times and the diagnostics showed no network errors. Each manufacturer blamed the other - in fairness to Simrad, they said that they would consider patching their firmware, but only if Raymarine were willing to work with them to facilitate it - they were not keen on trying to reverse engineer the requirements of the Raymarine AP.

 

[Ian_Rob]

If it is important to you that the current autopilot should work with the new Zeus gear, do a lot of research first before committing.

Well, important in that I don't want to incur unnecessary expense. If the Raymarine ST6002 autopilot isn't compatible then either 1] I forget about broadband radar 2]or change the autopilot as well. I haven't researched the cost of an alternative compatible autopilot by I guess it is going to be £2k and I can't justify that.

PS How long ago was it since you were liaising with Simrad/Raymarine on this matter?

 

[maby]

Well, important in that I don't want to incur unnecessary expense. If the Raymarine ST6002 autopilot isn't compatible then either 1] I forget about broadband radar 2]or change the autopilot as well. I haven't researched the cost of an alternative compatible autopilot by I guess it is going to be £2k and I can't justify that.

PS How long ago was it since you were liaising with Simrad/Raymarine on this matter?

This was about eighteen months ago. I have nothing written on the subject - it was a series of telephone calls. Both sides confirmed that they were aware of reports of problems and the support team at Simrad were open to the possibility of fixing it, but would have wanted a detailed specification of what the Raymarine autopilot was expecting.

This was interfacing via NMEA2000. It was suggested (by Raymarine, if I remember correctly) that I might have had more luck if I interfaced them via NMEA0183 - the protocol is simpler and there is less scope for incompatibility. I didn't fancy the idea since the boat already had the NMEA2000 backbone installed and I didn't want to go pulling extra cables through. As it happened, we changed boats before it became enough of a problem to force me to pull it all apart and lay the extra wires in. I shall go for single supplier solutions in the future - when something goes wrong on a mixed system it is just too difficult to get anyone to accept responsibility.

 

[geem]

Many thanks to all for the information and thanks Derekh but I think I will go for a new package. I like the idea of broadband, mainly due to the reduced emissions, weight, power draw and good close up visibility.

Will give some feedback once I have it up and running

We have a raymarine e120w down below and a e140w in the cockpit with digital colour 4kw radar. We remove the outdoor display when not using it. The cables are stored in the coaming behind a 100mm screw hatch. Works well and is all neat and tidy when put away.