"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;

How high is that antenna mounted? It would have to be 70' up to have a
horizon at 12 miles. If it was mounted that high you would only be able to
see ships higher than 70' at 24 miles. Those would have to be some pretty
big ships for you to see them at ranges of well over 24 miles, no matter how
powerful the radar.

Ed