Smallest Practical Size of Chart Plotter

  • Thread starter Thread starter catalac08
  • Start date Start date
garmin 451 and 551 come with full uk and channel charts embedded (you can get extra charts with phots but I dont need or want them).We have nasa ais feed and fitting a depth head to it this year . We use paper charts and a laptop charts for planning and to tranfer waypoints to the gamin from down below .I have set up sockets at home and keep them at home .

Dont know what engine you have on your catalac if deisels then no problem

But if outboard then big screens use a lot more ampage over summer hols

I met someone at St Marys they had a 14 inch plotter he was constantly switching it on and off because it ran his batteries down when on for a long passage
 
pvb said:
However, taking SH kit as an example, a 5" CP180i with a MegaWide cartridge is typically about £470; whereas a 7" CP3001 with a MegaWide cartridge is about £710 - an increase of about 50% for a substantially better spec.
Click to expand...

You forgot to add in an extra battery for the bigger one - it uses nearly double the power, and when sailing that can be significant.

I don't know how others use theirs but once I have the plan from the paper charts I only use the plotter for waypoints anyway so rarely look at the pictures.
 
lustyd said:
You forgot to add in an extra battery for the bigger one - it uses nearly double the power, and when sailing that can be significant.
Click to expand...

Utterly, completely, totally wrong! The average consumption of the 5" CP180i is 11.4W. The average consumption of the 7" CP300i is 13.8W. That's 2.4W extra - or 0.2A at 12V - or a miserly 4.8Ah over a constant 24 hour usage.

Had it occurred to you to check information before making spurious and misleading claims?
 
pvb said:
Rather unconvincing!
Click to expand...

If you must know I looked at the specs page at the amps which is nearly double for the bigger one. didn't see the watts anywhere and couldn't be arsed to look since volts x amps = watts and they both have 12V :)
 
lustyd said:
If you must know I looked at the specs page at the amps which is nearly double for the bigger one. didn't see the watts anywhere and couldn't be arsed to look since volts x amps = watts and they both have 12V :)
Click to expand...

Should have gone to Specsavers!

sh1.jpg


sh2.jpg
 
Last edited:
pvb said:
Should have gone to Specsavers!

sh1.jpg


sh2.jpg
Click to expand...



Dunno, that looks like the info on the fishfinder model to me. Check this out:

19.1 CP300/CP300i SPECIFICATIONS
Power Consumption CP300i : 750mA max @12V
CP300 : 750mA max @12V WITH EXTERNAL GPS CONNECTED
CP300 : 700mA max @12V WITHOUT EXTERNAL GPS CONNECTED

19.0 CP180/CP180i SPECIFICATIONS
Power Consumption CP180i : 520mA max @12V
CP180 : 460mA max @12V WITH EXTERNAL GPS CONNECTED
CP180 : 410mA max @12V WITHOUT EXTERNAL GPS CONNECTED

The bigger screen uses about a third more power, as we might expect?
 
doug748 said:
Dunno, that looks like the info on the fishfinder model to me. Check this out:

19.1 CP300/CP300i SPECIFICATIONS
Power Consumption CP300i : 750mA max @12V
CP300 : 750mA max @12V WITH EXTERNAL GPS CONNECTED
CP300 : 700mA max @12V WITHOUT EXTERNAL GPS CONNECTED

19.0 CP180/CP180i SPECIFICATIONS
Power Consumption CP180i : 520mA max @12V
CP180 : 460mA max @12V WITH EXTERNAL GPS CONNECTED
CP180 : 410mA max @12V WITHOUT EXTERNAL GPS CONNECTED

The bigger screen uses about a third more power, as we might expect?
Click to expand...

Correct! Sorry, copied the wrong manual. But, as you said, a lot less than double.
 
Twister_Ken said:
Five inches is fine for pilotage, which is really why you want a plotter in the cockpit. It's not enough for passage planning though or - literally - for getting the bigger picture.

Combined with a bigger plotter downstairs it's a good combination. I didn't wan't spend money on a big screen so have plumbed my plotter into a Yeoman Navigator at the chart table. It's not a bad compromise. A full chart's worth of picture down below, instant position finding on paper, and the ability to transfer waypoints in either direction, upstairs or down.

My plotter is a Garmin 555 which has the same screen size as the 551 series, but has better resolution, with almost 4x the pixel count.
Click to expand...

We have the Garmin 555 at the helm for most purposes. Paper charts on the nav table for passage planning seems to fill the gaps.
 
prv said:
the small Standard Horizon . . .when zoomed out most of the detail is missing from the chart.
Click to expand...

What is your zoom mode set to - STANDARD (default) or FLEXI?
With FLEXI you can zoom in/out and maintain the level of detail that the screen was showing before you zoom (out). (See bit in blue below).

6.0.0 Zoom Type
Allows more expansions or compression of the chart scale while zooming in or out. Zoom
Mode has two options; STANDARD (default) or FLEXI-ZOOM. When in FLEXI-ZOOM
mode, a short [ZOOM...] push causes a change of chart, while a long [ZOOM...] push (press
and hold) causes a pop-up window to be displayed on a corner of the screen. The window
shows the current Zoom Factor. By pressing [ZOOM IN]/[ZOOM OUT] the map is expanded
or compressed according to the zoom factor selected.
 
In 2006 I spent ages researching for a plotter at the helm. In the end I got a 5" Lowrance with the Transas charts.

I looked at larger plotters and theybwere either way too expensive, or the resolution was poor such that the Lowrance was much easier to view.

Used it all the way to Malta and back - excellent piece of kit, and absolutely no need to go bigger, or more expensive. Took us into and out of St Mary's on the Scilly Isles on the way back - quite a tricky passage if you don't know it, and weren't planning for it :)

If I had my time again, I would have bought Navionics charts for it, but would still be happy with the 5" screen. Did all the planning, nav and pilotage on it no problem. On occasions, we would leave port without much planning, and input the route on the hoof whilst helming - quite straightforward.

The Standard Horizon models came 2nd.
 
I have done some good work (well it impressed me) with a handheld Garmin Map76 with its tiny B & W screen. It has a built in "world map" ie a rough chart that looks like it has been drawn by a six year old. Using it ,with your own waypoints and charts below deck, is fine. I can see it pretty well, mounted above the compnaionway, from the tiller; in any case it is easy to move forward to gaze at it.
I now have a fancy 5in colour plotter but most of the time I will still probably prefer the Garmin.
I got the Digital Yacht 500, the screen looks excellent in bright light. In a recent review the Lowrance 5m came out very well, I would seriously look at that.
The screen size is fine but you would not want to plan a 500 mile trip on it, that's what charts are for. The bigger screens don't earn their keep on a small boat, in my view.
 
Interesting how we wandered into plotter consumption - I've had both 5" and 12" - consumption on both was, on low light, negligible. As for a plotter at the helm, in areas of high insolation it's really not satisfactory, possibly scrapes by in UK waters, but in the Med the displays regularly burn-out.
I always use paper-charts for planning purposes and have found a 5" (all LED-LCD-Raster screens are measured on the diagonal) quite adequate for navigation purposes for the last 18 years of using plotters.
Which last was, I think, the answer the OP was requesting - as to the additional cost of larger screens, IMHO the outlay is uneconomic.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top