So the Memorial Day trip to Block Island gave us a chance to check out the new electronics and see how it all works. It was a clear beautiful weekend and a gorgeous trip out and back, perfect conditions to test and play. Being able to see with the MkI Eyeball what the Radar is showing lets you know it’s working.
And it is working – very, very well.
In a word: Cool.
Being able to SEE things out there and now where they are when your eyes are blind is nice. And somewhat novel since our old radar was OK but antiquated. The small CRT tube on the nav station showed some monochrome blips that were usually where they were supposed to be.
The NEW radar shows a lot more blips with a lot more accuracy. We saw crystal clear returns off of small Quahog boats (14-18 foot power boats usually made of fiberglass and sometimes wood), sailboats where as clear as day and we even got a faint return off a kayak.
But more than that new radar has lot of of “Stuff” tied to it that the old one just couldn’t do. Like overlays over charts so the blips appear on the chart which helps you determine what’s a government mark and what’s a boat. And ARPA (Automatic Radar Plotting Aid), which allows the radar to acquire “Targets” and then calculate their course, speed, turn rate and flag any intercept threats. And AIS (Automated Identification System), which is a VHF signal required on commercial vessels giving their name, course, speed, destination, size, etc. etc. VERY useful when figuring out where that huge thing is going and getting you a name to hail long before you can pick it out on the binoculars. In fact the AIS can “see” ships that the Radar can not, being that they are both “line of sight” but the AIS signal is received 80 feet above the water and the Radar is only 18-20 feet over the water.
And all this stuff actually worked – we could see AIS signals from ships 10+ miles away or further and track other boats with ease. On a clear day, it’s cool. In the fog it gives you a lot more margin for error. Of course you can’t keep your head in the boat twiddling the dials and staring at a screen, you have to use your eyes and ears but every little bit of extra data helps.
The other instruments all worked well and easily. Some calibration is needed; we did the Maretron compass but the boat speed seems off. But it’s pretty damned good nonetheless, and we were already able to get more benefit from having true boat speed (not GPS which isn’t so helpful) to get our sail and boat trim dialed in better.
The Maretron DSM 250 is beyond great as an anchor watch tool (the primary function I bought it for). I can have a nice dim screen with red lights showing me heading, wind speed, time and boat drag position. The “Drag Alarm” feature is nice, you define a starting position (either with the current GPS position or you enter it) and it will notify you with a loud and persistent alarm as soon as your position moves outside a certain radium from that point. Just what I was looking for. The only disappointments are 1) I still can’t figure out where to permanently mount it in the at cabin and 2) it highlights how much NMEA2000 sensor information I am not making use of. There are a wide array of possible sensors out there – temperature, weather, etc. etc. most of which leave empty and useless screens.
My only real complaints are the FI-50 series instrument displays. The first complaint is they are a bit too reflective, a less shiny surface would pick up less glare and allow better visibility. The second complaints are specific to the FI-504 “Multi” and FI-503 “Digital” displays, neither of which compares favorably to the ancient Raymarine ST80 “Multi” display. Why? The ST80 allows you to show one large data item, or a “Multiline” display, and you can put any available information on any line of the multiline display. This lets you get a pretty useful display of what you want to see.
Not so with the FI-503 “Digital”, each line has a very limited subset of data that can be shown on it. You can’t get speed on line one, you can’t get depth on line two, etc. etc. And line three is tiny and mostly environmental information (of which I have next to none) or logged miles which I think is pretty useless. So I can’t display any data on any row. And the “Multi” does not have a multi line display option – it will show you everything in the system but only one item at a time. So neither device can match the capability of the older Raymarine gear. Disappointing, really. Though I’ve not read the manual cover to cover I’m pretty certain I’m right on this.
All in all – a very satisfying shakedown. Sure there are things to work out. Since returning from Block Island I’ve already made some changes, like installing the Power Supply Unit with the Radar. For this weekend I took a shortcut and plugged the radar directly to the MFD (Multi Function Display) which worked fine, but means the Radar is always on Standby when the MFD is on and is sucking precious power. With a separate power supply I can turn the Radar on and off and only let it suck amps when I think I will need it. But that is now in and working. And the antenna splitter I installed to piggyback the FM radio on the VHF antenna just didn’t seem to work, the VHF wasn’t getting out and the AIS wasn’t receiving until I dropped that out of the loop. Of course I don’t care a lot about FM anyway but it would be nice to work it out so I could listen to commercial radio if I felt like it.
The punch-down list for the electronics as it stands now:
- Reconnect new back stay antenna line to SSB antenna tuner (involves another hole in the deck)
- Install Furuno Autopilot, including rudder reference indicator, NMEA 0183 integration with network and a binnacle mounted controller.
- Move old Raymarine Autopilot controls out of the way
- Figure out why the MFD’s aren’t telling the course info to the FI-50’s
- Install the Wave WiFi unit permanently (waiting for “N” connectors); we did test this with a temporary small antenna and got signal and internet from shore.
- Tidy up all the wires
- Calibrate!
- Install an extra FI-503 display on the nav station.
- Figure out how to get a decent multi data display on the binnacle along with the autopilot control head.
- Update the MFD’s and other gear with all the latest firmware, charts, etc.
I’m sure there is more…and there is a much longer list of the “Spring Punchdown” list!
