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Radar - attitude changes
"Roger Long" wrote in message
... On Sep 27, 4:57 pm, "Capt. JG" wrote: Sure... explain away! I'm not a huge fan of radar... I thought SF Bay was quite foggy. Am I wrong? Back when I was saying I could do fine without radar in Maine I would also think, "Now if I was someplace like SF Bay..." You're right, but it's really not necessary for a couple of reasons. First, if you have it, you have to monitor, which takes away from the enjoyment of sailing. Second, I rarely _stay_ in the fog if I'm sailing on the bay. I might cross through it, but I've only sailed a couple of times when you couldn't see well enough to even consider needing it, and I've made the choice of not going in that particular spot. Third, it's a fairly small area. By the time you sort out what's what, you're just about done in that area anyway. Fourth, there's lots and lots of traffic that might or might not show up on radar, e.g., swimmers, kayaks, sailboards, and of course tankers, fishing boats (commercial or otherwise), towboats, pilot boats, CG, police, sheriff, and sailboats, not mention "debris" in the water. Radar would be a distraction. I looked at the small stand alone radars of size and power draw appropriate to my boat and learned that Garmin has done a clever thing (muc has it pains me to say since there is much I hate about Garmin in general). Their radars do all the signal processing up in the radome and then turn it into a signal that runs along a standard Cat 5 computer network cable like the one that probably is plugged into the back of your computer. A clever person could certainly hack software to make it display on a lap top. Most of their chartplotters accept this signal. So, for less than $200 more than a stand alone unit, I could buy a radome and a 3205 chartplotter with charts for the entire U.S. preloaded. I essentially got a second larger and more sophisticated chartplotter for free and a color display instead of the BW of comparably priced stand alone radars. Instrument space is precious on my small boat so it was also nice not to have yet another box. I like Garmin products generally. One issue is where to have the chartplotter. I don't want something in the companion way, since people tend to go up and down. There is a spot on the bulkhead forward of the binnacle, but it would be a fair distance to see things. I don't have a binnacle that would easily accept something there. The best thing about the set up is that the radar display can be overlaid on the chart with the GPS position. This is a huge improvement in situational awareness. You can figure out almost instantly whether a blip is a buoy or a vessel as opposed to going back and forth between a dedicated radar display and a GPS or chart transferring ranges and bearings. When you are sailing single or shorthanded, these workload savings reduce fatigue and improve lookout and attention to other navigational issues. I'd definitely want an all-in-one solution if I ever got something. If I decide to take her offshore for any length of time (coastal cruise offshore), then I might just make the leap. It's very difficult to run a proper radar plot in close, complex, waters such as along the coast of Maine. Radars of this size are not very conducive to plotting directly on the screen although some people do it. There are enough asterisks scattered around Maine waters that I'm reluctant to clutter up my screen with marks as well. The chart overlay is a great plotting substitute. You can see by watching soundings and other landmarks if a target is just wandering around randomly and is probably a lobster boat or maintaining a straight course and make a good estimate of speed. If it is close to maintaining a constant bearing, it will be pretty obvious. Switching to full screen radar mode gives your all the standard tools which I some times use but I have to use them a lot less because I can rule out most targets as a CPA danger just from the chart display. There's much more of a learning curve than I expected. I spent the first week or two thinking "Why did I spend all this money?" I thought the overlay was pretty useless because it was so hard to find the little red targets in the clutter. The brain trains. Now, I little red spot pops up and my brain zeros right in on it from six feet away at the helm. Working with it a lot in clear weather, I developed enough trust to do my singlehanded radar running on autopilot trusting to the advance warning. The straighter course the autopilot can keep, (at least when I'm standing radar watch) makes the whole picture clearer. I have the dodger in my hand and it only adds a couple of boat lengths to the distance in which I can spring to the controls and do a full stop or 180 turn which is much faster in my boat. As I said, I wouldn't sail without it now. Not quite the same thing, but on a charter boat out of La Paz, Mexico, we had a chartplotter tied to GPS. It was a pretty simple set up, but it took some futzing to get it to show what we wanted, and eventually we realized it was just a distraction. -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
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