First, you might think about Furuno.

I purchased a Raymarine radar with the 4KW dome a couple of years ago. It
worked well for about 9 months, then just quit on a trip. Got it home, the
tech worked and worked on it, and said he'd have to send the whole thing to
the factory for warranty repair. I got it back TWO MONTHS later, still
didn't work. Turned out the cable between the unit and the dome had "gone
bad". No damage, just was bad.

Now I don't know if the backlog at Raymarine is due to understaffing or TONS
of units coming back for repair, but either is ominous, especially if you
really NEED your radar. Luckily at the time I was not traveling full time or
out of the country.

OTOH, I've heard nothing but good about Furuno equipment. If I had it to do
over, that's the way I'd go.

As to the 2 vs. 4 KW dome, I'd get the best you can afford and be done with
it. If you can't afford the 4, got with the 2. Any radar is better than
none! If you're just looking for very basic radar though, you probably need
to look at JRC. Good, solid basic systems at a great price.

--


Keith
__
"How soon a ship can age and die for want of the love of a human being."
--Peter Gerard--
"Geoffrey W. Schultz" wrote in message
7...
I have a Furuno 1621 MkII radar that I've never been happy with. At this
point I believe that the radome has basically failed and I'm planning on
replacing the entire system.

I think that I'm going to replace it with RayMarine C70 system which
provides a radar and chartplotter. This will be compatible with my
Autohelm autopilot and this will provide a redundant chartplotter.

I've been pondering the differences between a 2KW radome and a 4 KW
radome.
Based upon the litature the 2 KW unit provides 24 nm range vs 48 nm range.
This doesn't seem to really matter as the radar is only mounted about
10-12
feet above the water on a radar mast and the radar horizon to a 50' high
target is only 14+ miles. I've been told that the 4KW is very helpful in
dense fog (not applicable to the Caribbean where I spend most of my time,
but would be useful when I return to New England) or heavy rain and that
it
also provides better separation of targets.

My typical use of radar is at night where I have the range set to about 8
nm or to watch for squalls, where the extended range would be useful.

There's a huge difference in cost between the two. The 2KW unit runs
around $900 and the 4KW unit runs about $1600. Based upon my usage and
setup, is the additional cost worth it? Are there other things that I
should be thinking of?

Thanks, Geoff