Thank you for the experience and comments. The first 2KW dome had
water in it, too. I might just seal it up tight when the mast climber
goes up to fix the light on the mizzen. Sounds like a problem area.

When I first installed the 2KW dome on the old Endeavour, one of the
cheap crimped wires fell out of the cheap control cable plug you put
inside the dome. Upon inspecting this plug, I decided to solder all
connections. I have a tiny tipped solding iron I use with
surface-mounted parts that's temperature controlled. The wires fell
right out of the original, Raymarine-made plugs on top.

I'm still ****ed that ALL manufacturers are trying to use PC board
cheap plugs for interconnect in a marine environment. Case in point
is the new Icom M802 HF SSB with the Icom AT-140 antenna tuner with
the pc board control plug EXPOSED TO THE OCEAN! How stupid can they
be?! One splash and the 12VDC in the plug would simply electroplate
it into oblivion....(sigh). I unsoldered the whole affair and threw
it in the trash where it belonged. Icom left out the screw terminal
PC board mount to save 50 cents, so I had to directly solder my
control cable to the PC board after feeding the cable through the
cheap plastic "watertight" (PUN!) connector through the case. We'll
see how it does. ANYTHING is better than what the factory sent
me....yecch!

On Tue, 2 Sep 2003 07:04:22 -0500, "Keith"
wrote:

Well, I had a Raytheon CRT radar on my last boat, that worked very well. 4KW
open array, nice unit. I wanted to stick with them.

I saw FOUR new open array installations replaced under warranty on my pier
alone, all from water intrusion. The techs replacing them said they were
replacing at least half of all the open array units installed for the same
problem. Cheap engineering.

I went ahead and bought the Raymarine 7" color LCD radar (standalone) but
went with the 4KW dome, since it was obvious that the open arrays were
faulty. About 6 months after I purchased it, it quit while I was on a trip.

The tech came out, tested it all out as best he could, said the cable was
OK, so he had to send the entire unit to Raymarine. It took 7 WEEKS to get
it through their service department and back. Good thing I didn't need this
thing to earn a living! They said their service department was swamped. Now
that only means one of two things, or both. Either they're understaffed, or
a high proportion of what they sell is coming back, or both.

When we got it back, they had replaced something, don't remember what. We
remounted everything, still wouldn't work. Turns out the cable was bad. No
cuts, punctures, etc., just "went bad". Replaced under warranty, but I was
still without radar for about 9 weeks.

Since posting that on another mail list, I got a rash of similar experiences
from other folks on premature failures of Raymarine equipment. A lot of
cost-saving engineering seems to be going on there, making equipment that's
less reliable, but makes a lot more profit for them.

I'm stuck with mine now, and hope it continues to work. If I had to do it
all over again though, I'd stick with Furuno. Don't get me wrong, when it
works, it's great! I'm just worried about the reliability now... what if
this had happened when I REALLY needed it, or was down in the islands
somewhere?

--


Keith
__
Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
"Larry W4CSC" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 1 Sep 2003 10:46:14 -0500, "Keith"
wrote:

Best cost / performance ratio would be one of the JRC black and white LCD
models. Furuno would be good in any model. Stay away from Raymarine,
they're
pretty much making only crap since breaking away from Raytheon.

I'm interested in why you know Raymarine is crap. My buddy's boat has
the SL70CRCPlus, 2KW radome, gyrocompass, WAAS-GPS in its multi-vendor
network I installed and the only problem we had was some water in the
radome which Raymarine simply gave us a new one, no questions asked,
to replace it. The units functioned flawlessly at sea and I've
recommended them to other boaters from our experience. Even with the
little 2KW planar stripline antenna array, I can see ships far beyond
the 24 mile range advertised. The MARPA is like having military
target acquisition and ranging and makes a helluva great toy during
long watches at night....(c;

Lemme know what you know and what problems you've actually had with
Raymarine products.....please!.....before we buy more!


Larry

Extremely intelligent life must exist in the universe.
You can tell because they never tried to contact us.



Larry

Extremely intelligent life must exist in the universe.
You can tell because they never tried to contact us.