Raymarine Radar Chartplotter

[yzlian]

hello, does anyone have experience using a raymarine radar gps chartplotter combo? are they any good? i have one source that says the newly designed radome has a top that collects water... how true is that?

[olepedersen]

Ihave raymarine chart plotter,radar,wind,autopilot works great ,due to poor installation I did it, we lost the radome in the ocean it was towed by the cable at 6knots for apprx 5 min back on shore I opened it, bone dry ,very good seal Ole

[barnakiel]

They are ok.

b.

[downunder]

Only OK, barnie. ???

[s/v Jedi]

Ok? I wouldn't call it ok as I'm replacing it all and the bill for that is at $11k already.

I would stay far away from it and I say that just to offset the other posts a bit. If you want low-cost, go Garmin. Want top product? go Furuno. Want good sensors? go Maretron and/or Airmar.

cheers,
Nick.

[s/v Moondancer]

After 3 yrs and 12,000 mile of pounding one of my 11 Raymarine instruments has failed and gone back for repair...

How well the factory handles that will be reported later!

[psneeld]

Some models have been great...others not so great...same with ALL manufacturers.

Furuno usually has the commercial market in mind it seems and has nice but often a bit less "state of the art" (which actually can be a good thing) and they also have in many opinions the best customer service.

I base this on years of working both in the marine electronics field and as a pro captain with experience on most brands.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by downunder

Only OK, barnie. ???

Yep.

Most of the boats I have been on had Rays. None of them broke down on me. All worked as advertised.

I dislike the clunky interface and the fact that they zoom counter-intuitively ;-)))

But my likes and dislikes are mine. The instruments worked and that's it.

b.

[jim_thomsen]

We have the raymarine system and it has worked great for 5 years and 25,000 miles. One advantage of Raymairne is that there are usually yacht friendly service people available most places we have been (Med, Caribbean, Pacific)

[goboatingnow]

Rays stuff works well. Furunos standard yachttie stuff is not at all like their commercial stuff, ( Navnet3D is headless XP, its just a PC in there).

The C90W with the integral GPS works well as does the GPS dome.

Dave

[cabo_sailor]

I have Raymarine and its given me a few problems. The radar stopped working and then the chartplotter would blink on and off every few seconds. Cleaned the contacts and then reattached cables one at a time to the chartplotter. Bingo! No problem on the chartplotter until I reconnected the radar cable. I suspect that something in the radome is drawing too much power causing the plotter to shut down.

Raymarine did have a .pdf file for diagnosing what's wrong but that will mean climbing the stick to get to the dome. It's on the list, maybe I'll get to it in a month or so. Were I to do it again, I would choose Furuno.

Rich