Radar

[Ken Juul]

My antique Apelco AR16 radar had been dieing a slow death.  It finally quit this summer.  Thinking of taking advantage of Boat Show specials and picking a new one up.  Right now the Raymarine C80 with the new 2kw dome is my pick.  Antenna on the existing mast mount, display will be mounted at the Nav station with the cords long enough to reach out the campanionway under the dodger for real bad weather use.  It is going to be a stand alone radar, not going to use the chart plotter function, but want the ability to easily upgrade. I also want to upgrade from monochrome to the color screen. 

Pros or cons?  I've been told of RMs poor customer service, but have not had any problem with them when dealing with my ST4000. 

A local poll of marine electronics stores all point toward the RM line, but it is their biggest seller.  Any other units I should consider?

Anchor Express.com seems to have the cheapest prices.  Going to use them for comparison.  I've checked WM/Defender/BrokenLegDave any other stores I should consider?

[tstrand]

Ken,

You might want to check EBay. I bought a Raymarine RL70RC plus radome from an EBay seller called Discount Marine (buy it now pricing - no auction). It was $150 cheaper than anywhere else I could find by internet search, and it was brand new, in the box. This was in May 2004.

Tim

[John Langford]

I bought the JRC 1500 for about $1000 (US) and it has proved to be an excellent piece of gear. The display is not colour but it shows well at the helm in bright sunny weather. I am not sure why one would want colour radar. The target is either there or it is not.

[Stephen Butler]

We are sailing from Tampa Bay to Galvaston this summer, more or less directly, and have several questions concerning radar.  1) We have spoken to several Texas-based sailors and some of them insist that radar is mandatory for safey while going through the oil-rig fields, while others say that it is a nice to have, but not needed if one has a gps and keeps a DR on a current chart (which we do).  Thoughts?   2) If we do add radar, what are the pros and cons of an integrated system?  They sure look great, but we worry about loosing the "whole" integrated system with a single failure.  Does anyone have info on the weak points and reliability of integrated systems?  Finally, 3) Has anyone had experience with the Garmin units?
Thanks for you advice. 

[Ken Juul]

I went with the RM C80 display and 2kw dome.  Boaters World had a great price on them.  Plus RM is running a deal where they throw in the GPS antenna for $0.01.  Most of the dealers/repair shops i spoke to said if an integrated system is desired, you can buy more expensive systems, but they are not that much better than the RM.  The new 2kw dome is supposed to be very good.  There are some very good stand alone monochrome radars that are less expensive if radar is all that is needed.

The weather dectection is supposed to be much better than in older units, I know I won't get the true "doppler radar" the weather services use, but I'm hoping the color screen will make avoiding the afternoon Thunder storms easier.  Plus I want the ability to upgrade to the chart plotter at some point in the future.  Even then I will DR and use my hand held GPS as backups.

Stephen, I would think you can safely avoid the oil wells, they don't move.  Ship traffic at night or hazy low vis days scares me!  No experience with the Garmin and I haven't heard any negative.  No positives either.  They make great GPS units.