[knuterikt]

Gary... I know you've made your mount... I was thinking of one of these similar to the Scanstrut design...

I made this quick drawing to show what I mean...

You need to include some sort of damping into your design.
Explain why the ready made ones is costly.

 

[knuterikt]

Show me where that damping is located on the costly ones... but that could be overcome with thrust washers or light spring(s) offering several pounds of damping... not a deal breaker... the idea is to self level 16 pounds of antenna weight.

The costly ones are there because they figure no one has the 'know how'.... typical in this and auto/aviation industry...

It was just a concept... it of course will need your engineering thinking to make it work.

take a close look again at the Scanstrut design... I'm sure there is a spring in the housing adding some damping...

From the Scanstrut web site

Features:
Hydraulic Damping
The main levelling unit features a fine tuned damping system which reacts to major changes in heel angle of the boat. It is entirely maintenance free and no power is required

Sorry didn't mean to offend you
Mine is manually adjustable but I have never needed to use this feature.

 

[knuterikt]

About the connection of the radar to the HDS7... why would it need extra devices? What was Lowrance thinking? It should be plug and play and should overlay the radar image on the plotter... I'll have to read my unit technical manual when it comes in... is this true of all radars including Garmin and Furuno?

All chart plotters I know need acculturate heading information to be able to overlay the radar picture (which is always heading up) on top of a chart.
Seems all of them require a heading sensor to do this (COG from GPS is not good enough)

 

[knuterikt]

My local electronics installer installed a 3G radar on his car the other day....

He was on his way to the mountains to test if the 3G radar can be used on the cars that keep mountain passes open during the winter (already tested at home).
They have a problem - the sticks marking the road is invisible in the snow storms and GPS is not accurate enough.

For this test he used tin foil as radar reflector and the test was promising.