Radar Recommendation

[jpstevens]

Considering radar on my limited budget. Any suggestions for an economy model which will be reliable and allow me to steer clear of those unlighted, abandoned rigs in the gulf (that I have fortunately spotted in clear weather) when the weather's not so good.

[Shrew]

Raymarine bundles a C80 (Classic) with a dome which is fairly affordable. I bought the c70 bundle a few years ago. It works very well and will integrate easily with the GPS if you add on their GPS antennae. There's also a few used (barely used) beign offered in the forum 'for sale' section as well. Not really sure how limited the budget is.

[jpstevens]

Thanks for the help.

[bob_77903]

Garmin 18 HD...It has worked very well for me..

[tartansail]

You don't say anything about your budget or your current electronics. If you have a chartplotter display that can take radar input, get the least expensive, compatible dome of the same manufacture and buy it.

Both the classifieds and eBay may have reasonably priced used versions since some folks seem to upgrade their electronics pretty regularly and the newer HD/digital setups are incompatible with radomes and displays that are only a few years old. If you're going with a used setup, I would recommend something that, at least, has an LCD display rather than an old CRT. I mean, really, there's old and there's TOO old.

I had the Garmin 18HD on my old boat and concur bob_77903. It's a great unit. I had it tied to the Garmin 740s display. However, it's not an inexpensive solution unless $2K+ sounds inexpensive. If you find a really cheap used 18HD unit, ask for the serial number and check with Garmin. They had a recall on some of the earlier units. If one is still on the market there may be a reason that the recall wasn't honored for that owner and you could get stuck with a bad unit.

[Unicorn Dreams]

Welcome Aboard Cruisers Forum

What? You don't like dodging the rigs and standpipes, that's what makes sailing the GOM north coast so much fun.

[jpstevens]

You might be right. At least they're not moving at 15 kts.

[shamrock]

I'm looking at buying a C80 bundle from Raymarine. It comes with the RD218 Radome. Would this be considered a "digital" radar package? I was under the impression that digital radar used much less power than the old school high radiation models and borrowed technology from cell phones. Am I correct? does anybody have any opinions on the C80 and RD218?

thanks

[xymotic]

THe C80 is a good unit, once you use them they are easy to use, but if you use it infrequently its learning curve can be maddening.

And it's a little long in the tooth tech wise, there are newer, better units out there. Digital, HD, and broadband are all terms used very loosly and interchangably, not quite accurately.

I *think* you have to get the HD version for Raymarine lower radiation but I'm not positive.

[Mambo]

Originally Posted by shamrock

I'm looking at buying a C80 bundle from Raymarine. It comes with the RD218 Radome. Would this be considered a "digital" radar package? I was under the impression that digital radar used much less power than the old school high radiation models and borrowed technology from cell phones. Am I correct? does anybody have any opinions on the C80 and RD218?

thanks

Don't confuse Broadband radar with HD radar (digital). HD may be lower power than older units, but the broadband radar is where the real power savings occurs -- and where the radiation output falls to safe levels. I think Lowrance Navico Simrad (all same company) are still the only ones offering broadband. Garmin has a HD unit (4208 package or 780 package) that is comparable with the C80 pakage price wise. I think Garmin and Lowrance offer a lot more bang for the buck right now than RM. But go to the store and play with them -- and read the many reviews online.

[motion30]

Sometimes deals can be had on ebay, worth a look

[Tim Schaaf]

Until a very few years ago, when Raymarine introduced their digital radars, they had a potentially lethal fault. I brought this to the attention of their VP, who put me in touch with their top radar guy, who acknowledged it. But, this fault never has made its way into any user warnings that I have heard of. They also said other non-digital radars suffered from the same thing, and that the digital ones don't, but I can't confirm that.

What happened? Although I had used other radars for years (did a lot of singlehanding for over twenty years, and a radar alarm was my "other" crewmember), I always tuned them manually, like I was trained to do. The manual for the Raymarine Unit I bought (new) in 2004 dealt with manual tuning, gain, sea clutter, etc, very offhandedly, and was strongly oriented toward the automatic controls. I realize now, that this was probably a marketing ploy. Anyway, I tested the auto controls, and it was obvious that the radar tunes itself automatically with great accuracy. I could not do better myself. The same was not true of either the gain or the sea clutter controls, but it could take several minutes for this to manifest itself. Manual radar controls usually have levels defined by numbers, which, on my set, were from 0 to 100. On my set, the best gain (tuned for a light background speckle) is somewhere from 76 to 82, depending upon the range setting). Sea clutter would be optimized somewhere between 0 and 30, depending almost entirely upon sea state. Auto controls started on the same range, but it was only a year or so later, when I started getting very suspicious of some missed targets, that I realized that, over a few minutes, gain would settle down to around 50 - 55, which would effectively erase lots of boats, buoys and the occasional island. Yes, island. The automatic Sea Clutter controls were better, but contributed further to degrading targets. In my opinion, it was highly irresponsible of Raymarine to include such a flawed "automatic" system, with the strong implication that the auto setting was all you needed to use. Silly me, I thought that my old training had been superceded by a true improvement in technology.

The aforementioned tech's answer when I asked him about this was. "Sure, all radars, pre-digital, have this fault. I would never use auto settings in any situation where the performance of the radar was important!" How could they sell such a feature?

This was driven home to me in a big way before I discovered this flaw. Some of you may remember either hearing or reading of a catamaran in the Caribbean 1500, 2004 edition, that collided with a NOAA weather buoy about 220 miles off Cape Haterras. It was written up in water sailing">Blue Water Sailing and Latitude 38, among other places, and there was a fair amount of online chatter about the skipper who must not have been on watch to make such a mistake. Well, that guy was me, and I was on watch, at the wheel, looking out ahead on a pitch black night, well aware that there was a six meter, in diameter, weather buoy out there somewhere, supposedly with a light flashing every 20 seconds. And, I had my radar on for precisely this reason and, no, I was not singlehanding. The situation was complicated by the fact that the buoy is anchored in 12,000 feet of water, so its swinging circle was several miles in radius.

Since I had three other crew on board, none with extensive radar experience, I had made the mistake of telling them to just set things on automatic. I had come on watch about a half hour before the collision, and probably had not thought to re-tune manually. I did not think I needed to. Unfortunately, it also turned out that the light that was supposed to flash every 20 seconds was out, which I am told is highly unlikely as there are several back up lights set up to flash if the one higher up the line fails. Well, I suppose that salt water is an issue with the electrical systems on buoys, too, because, all the lights were out, which we confirmed after the collision.

Despite the fact that I was looking straight ahead, I did not see the yellow 6 meter in diameter buoy (it is more like a huge floating hockey puck with various sensors and antennae) until our nav lights flashed on its reflective tape, about a boat length and a half dead ahead. We were doing seven plus knots, under autopilot. The Raymarine 7000 autopilot control head is not backlit, and I had only owned the boat for a few months, so I did not know, instinctively, which button was "standbye"; in the instant before impact, I just leaned as hard as I could on the helm, and managed to avoid hitting the buoy dead on, but caught it on the bow on the port hull. This opened a hole right on the stem about two feet measured vertically. That is when I learned how tough a Leopard 45 is ( it would have done much greater damage to most other boats) and how effective the water tight bulkhead is.

Very long story short, (and glossing over the un-requested mayday sent out on our behalf by another boat in the rally, which resulted in attention from a C-130, two USCG cutters, and a helicopter), we did make it back to the Chesapeake with a huge hole but no water into the hull aft of the collision bulkhead. And, after a $37,000 insurance claim and many months of a charter season lost, we were back in business.

For a couple of years, I wracked my brains as to how I could have missed such a buoy on the radar. And, believe me, I was asked about it to no end, as well. My friends, who knew of my singlehanded past and years of radar dependency were particularly incredulous. It was a long time until I finally put two and two together, in a manner that was easily replicated. Quite simply, the automatic settings had blinded the radar, and I was not aware of it. And, I had not bothered to re-tune manually.

We were lucky. No one was hurt, and the boat was repaired. But, how such an "advanced feature" could make its way out of a responsible factory, I do not know.
It is probably true that all older radars share this flaw. Certainly, the old maxim was to always use manual controls. But the manual sure suggests otherwise, and I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of radar users on this forum probably use the automatic controls. And, apparently, this is OK on the digital sets, although I would test very carefully before I would feel comfortable.

But, getting back to the OP, if you get a radar more than a few years old, be sure to learn how to set your controls manually. You will be just fine, if you do. My Raymarine works very nicely that way. As have all the other radars I used previously. Just take the instructions for the automatic settings with a grain of salt.

Cheers,
Tim

[barnakiel]

Furuno 1623.

Inexpensive, reliable and not power-hungry.

b.

[senormechanico]

Originally Posted by bob_77903

Garmin 18 HD...It has worked very well for me..

+ 1 Me too.

[senormechanico]

Tim,
Thanks for that great post.
I'm glad nobody got hurt.
I think I'll turn on my Garmin 5208 and 18HD radar at my dock, tune it manually for optimum, take a photo of the screen.
We have flat water all the time unless it's blowing 50 kts.

Then I'll leave it on for 8 hours with full auto settings and take another photo.

The results should be interesting.