tcm
...
I got a 2nd hand boat with a rayamarine E80. nothing unusual bout that, loads of boats have this gear.
First transat, at night, when dimmed, the screen goes on the blink. It flashes now and again, sometimes once an hour, sometimes more often. It's as tho it is gonna go bang. Ooer. We eventually had it replaced. We met another boat on their third E80, the very same problem. Then on another transat our replacement did the same! With lots of pushing, the nice raymarinies replaced again. I toldem this must be a design fault. Ooh, no, can't be - raymarine stuff is used on the ARC doncha know, so it must be just fab. Hm. Have they checked it themselves, we asked? Yerknow, get ten of them in a dark room all turned to v dim? Um, no...
fast forward to last weekend - we flew to las palmas to check out the ARC a bit, change of scenery (we're in lanzarote, 30 min flite) and in the arc office there are all the little lists from the helpful manufacturers service bod in port to come help. You write the name of boat and problem and berth number on the relevant list under B+G, lewmar etc and a bloke wil hopeflly come and sort it out. But here's the ooer MASSIVE several dozen "help me!" mesages running to seveal pages for raymarine...and loads mention a flashing when the E80 unit is set to dim. I mean, not just two, but lots. Swmbo went a bit bonkers, cos she's the one been on the blower a load of times. Okay, i hadn't entered the arc so bit cheeky of me to be riffling through the notices.
But anyway... YW's halowed annual arc survey seems not to mention it last year? They seem to just compile a few questionaires. Not surprising i spose - if you had a big prob with a bit of gear, you'd stay nice wouldncha, not rip in on the YW questionnaire and say the poxy thing doesn't actualy work at night, frinstance Hence most of the gear in YW survey all seems somewhere between okay and fab. A bit advertiser friendly, realy. not like JD power frexample. I hope this not the case?
The E80 is obviously not at all fab, really. Many of the units have this "known" problem. The problem being that it flashes when at low brighness. Very hard to get a warranty engr to just sit there fr an hour gazing at near-invisibly dimmed screen waiting for the prob to appear, although some more open experts/dealers know of the prob, a lot.
YW - it would be a LOT more use to catalogue the problems listed on that noticeboard eh? Or cross-reference to it, a bit? There are far more problems than just one raymarine bloke could possibly fx in a week imho? At the moment the annual so-called "survey" is essentialy a sanitised "was everything alright sir?" pizza hut style opinion card enquiry after the event. Whereas it is patenetly obvious from just casual looking at that raymarine problem list that there is an inherent problem with E80 - loads have this very same problem.
This doesn't alter the fact that raymarine are nice people etc, and most of their stuff very nice. But the whole point of radar is to see at night, and v low brightness means this fault is quite likely on current models. And that's what your YW arc survey is sposed to reveal? But didn't. How bout it? Take down the name of each boat on that list, and askem all if fixed with replacement? And ask raymarine what they plan to do to fix it permanently?
Oh, and if raym say "instal new software release" that doesn't fix it. No, not even if you do it in almost every single port in FWI, med spain and other places too. Also a "board swap" - that does nothing either.
Anyway, i think YW shd publish something that draws attention to this quite common problem.
Oh, and for myself, i have had another extra radar screen fited. Yeah ok, another e80 cos else i wd need to rip out everything. Which i mite yet have to do sometime.
um sorry to ramble.
First transat, at night, when dimmed, the screen goes on the blink. It flashes now and again, sometimes once an hour, sometimes more often. It's as tho it is gonna go bang. Ooer. We eventually had it replaced. We met another boat on their third E80, the very same problem. Then on another transat our replacement did the same! With lots of pushing, the nice raymarinies replaced again. I toldem this must be a design fault. Ooh, no, can't be - raymarine stuff is used on the ARC doncha know, so it must be just fab. Hm. Have they checked it themselves, we asked? Yerknow, get ten of them in a dark room all turned to v dim? Um, no...
fast forward to last weekend - we flew to las palmas to check out the ARC a bit, change of scenery (we're in lanzarote, 30 min flite) and in the arc office there are all the little lists from the helpful manufacturers service bod in port to come help. You write the name of boat and problem and berth number on the relevant list under B+G, lewmar etc and a bloke wil hopeflly come and sort it out. But here's the ooer MASSIVE several dozen "help me!" mesages running to seveal pages for raymarine...and loads mention a flashing when the E80 unit is set to dim. I mean, not just two, but lots. Swmbo went a bit bonkers, cos she's the one been on the blower a load of times. Okay, i hadn't entered the arc so bit cheeky of me to be riffling through the notices.
But anyway... YW's halowed annual arc survey seems not to mention it last year? They seem to just compile a few questionaires. Not surprising i spose - if you had a big prob with a bit of gear, you'd stay nice wouldncha, not rip in on the YW questionnaire and say the poxy thing doesn't actualy work at night, frinstance Hence most of the gear in YW survey all seems somewhere between okay and fab. A bit advertiser friendly, realy. not like JD power frexample. I hope this not the case?
The E80 is obviously not at all fab, really. Many of the units have this "known" problem. The problem being that it flashes when at low brighness. Very hard to get a warranty engr to just sit there fr an hour gazing at near-invisibly dimmed screen waiting for the prob to appear, although some more open experts/dealers know of the prob, a lot.
YW - it would be a LOT more use to catalogue the problems listed on that noticeboard eh? Or cross-reference to it, a bit? There are far more problems than just one raymarine bloke could possibly fx in a week imho? At the moment the annual so-called "survey" is essentialy a sanitised "was everything alright sir?" pizza hut style opinion card enquiry after the event. Whereas it is patenetly obvious from just casual looking at that raymarine problem list that there is an inherent problem with E80 - loads have this very same problem.
This doesn't alter the fact that raymarine are nice people etc, and most of their stuff very nice. But the whole point of radar is to see at night, and v low brightness means this fault is quite likely on current models. And that's what your YW arc survey is sposed to reveal? But didn't. How bout it? Take down the name of each boat on that list, and askem all if fixed with replacement? And ask raymarine what they plan to do to fix it permanently?
Oh, and if raym say "instal new software release" that doesn't fix it. No, not even if you do it in almost every single port in FWI, med spain and other places too. Also a "board swap" - that does nothing either.
Anyway, i think YW shd publish something that draws attention to this quite common problem.
Oh, and for myself, i have had another extra radar screen fited. Yeah ok, another e80 cos else i wd need to rip out everything. Which i mite yet have to do sometime.
um sorry to ramble.
