Raymarine SR100 Satellite Weather?

[danielgoldberg]

Anyone use this service? What are your thoughts? I note that on Raymarine's website it states you must be in the continental US, but then it also advertises that it's good for offshore work. Has anyone here used this offshore? As you might imagine, if it works between the US east coast and Bermuda, that might give it a fair bit more usefulness to me.

Thanks,

[MC1]

I've used it for two years on Lake Ontario and so far I'm not very impressed.

There are periods of time when there's "No Connection" (i.e., the unit is not receiving any data signal from the Sirius satellites), and this happens even with clear skies and no obstructions that might block reception. When there is a connection, there's often very little information showing on the display, even when there is active weather in the area. Other times, it seems to work fine. I haven’t been able to discern a pattern yet that would suggest a specific cause for the service being intermittent, so for now I’m blaming the service provider .

I've been hoping they're working the kinks out of the service, but wish they'd pick up the pace. I'll be interested to hear if others regard it more highly - maybe the service is better for use along the East Coast and elsewhere. So far, I don't trust it to give me advanced notice of any fast moving storms up here on Lake Ontario, which was one of my reasons for having it.

I do like the integration of the weather feature within Raymarine’s system though. It’s nice to see mapping information, radar, and weather (when available) either: 1) Each on separate small panels within one screen, 2) All showing simultaneously - overlaid on top of each other on one full size screen, or 3) On separate full size screens that you toggle between to show each type of information separately.