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Radome location
Wayne, your points are well taken. I had read the Raymarine website (we have a Raymarine setup), but also talked to a number of people with fixed mounts who had found in practice no ill effect, and our experience matches. So I was suggesting leveling benefits may be more theoretical than real, at least for most of us. If you need maximum performance at serious heel angles, get leveling. We find our radar use (and those we talk to) is almost always feeling through fog or at night with modest heel.
On height, a lower mount does handicap max range performance, but can enhance close in and that''s where the accurancy is appreciated, like feeling for buoys in fog. The stuff we look for at ranges over 6 miles tends to be either decent size boats (collision avoidance) or land (navigation), and these stick up enough to be seen. We turn the radar on the 24 mile range sometimes for kicks but serious work seems always close in. Our experience anyhow, others may be different. The question (as always) is how will you be using it. On the backstay mount, I''ve raced on a J-35 and they used to also slack the backstay to where a radar and mount would flop around, so I assumed the same. If you keep the backstay always tight enough, a backstay mount could be the right choice, but that reduces some of the adjustability of the J-35 rig.
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