[Maine Sail]

I think the power savings of the broadband radars is a bit of a red herring. I have installed lots of systems and I don't find the Navico packages really draw that much less power "as installed" than other comparable systems. Yes in stand-by there is a good savings but when I run radar, I run radar. Mine takes 60 seconds to warm up and I have never seen the fog move in faster than that...

For example I was working on a boat a few weeks ago with a new Simrad NSS system with 4G radar and with the plotter & radar running they were burning up about 3.8A as a pair. Everything else was turned off and this was measured with a high quality extremely accurate DC clamp meter. This boat with broadband radar burned approx 1.2A more than I do with a Garmin system mostly due to the choice in plotter.

On my own boat I am driving a Garmin network expander, a 3200 series plotter and a GMR-18HD radar (I also have one at the nav-desk that is networked if I desire to run it). This package consumes about 2.6A with plotter, network expander and radar running.

When I flip off the radome I drop to 0.9A (network expander and plotter) which means the GMR-18HD dome draws approx 1.7A. The Simrad 4G boat I was working on also drew approx 1.7A for the dome.. Power savings????? Yep, if you run the radar in standby you will save but when I need radar it is spinning. Heck at 1.7A I spin it nearly all the time even in good weather..

The biggest savings in power consumption often comes from which plotter you choose not necessarily the spinning radome..

While walking around the marina I was working in today I did an impromptu radar survey and saved it in the notes app on my phone.. I counted every dome I could see including commercial boats. In Maine this is what this sample survey is choosing, and we nearly invented FOG...

Raymarine = 23
Garmin = 27
Furuno = 14
Simrad = 1 (4G Broadband)
JRC = 1

What does this mean? No clue but it took just a few minutes to collect it...

 

[Maine Sail]

Those amp measures are great though. I love the idea of lower power usage, but I too think that I'll either be using radar, or I won't. In use, both technologies appear pretty much the same. Waiting a few minutes (in the extreme case) to have the pulse radars warm up doesn't seem like that big a deal to me.

I would love to get more measurements but we simply don't have enough broadband installations around here to get my tools on. Those that I have had them on have all drawn slightly more power than my Garmin system with a 3205, but the smallest plotter I measured was a 7" and mine is 5". The difference is most often in the plotter.

The other problem is that installers & DIY's generally don't break out radar & plotter & N2K separately, on separate breakers, and instead lump them all on the same breaker. This, IMHO, is a disservice to the end user as the dome / radar interface box, N2K etc. can be in an always on mode the minute you fire up the plotter. If you don't need it I prefer a switch/breaker to isolate it. It also makes it more difficult to see exactly what the power consumption is for the dome and the plotter or the N2K instruments.. Also many plotters are pulled off of for N2K power, another installation practice I dislike.

Getting accurate measurements of these systems requires tracking down the individual power wires to clamp and measure.

 

[Maine Sail]

I've had several Furuno radars and currently have one older Furuno 4kw unit and a new 4kw Garmin HD (on different boats). The Garmin is displayed on a 6212 display and is fairly easy to set up and use once you have played with all the different options in the different menus. I really like the radar overlay, it greatly reduces the workload when in the soup (the older Furuno I have is a stand alone display). While the new Garmin with the overlay feature on the plotter screen is hard to beat I have to say that it misses a lot of targets that the Furuno has no trouble with (I run them in good visibility a lot just to stay in practice). For example: we have a lot of tugs with tows here and at 4-8 nm the Garmin shows one blip while the Furuno shows two close together and even at short ranges of 1-2nm the Garmin misses some small vessels while the Furuno rarely does. I've noticed that the sensitivity of the Garmin seems to increase if you reduce the range (targets that don't show up on the 4nm range do show up if you reduce the range to 1nm). I've been told that that the Furuno has a higher sensitivity because it has a narrower band width (3 degrees + -) than the Garmin (5 degrees + -) even though both are rated 4kw. If I had to do it again I think I would have spent more and gone with Furuno, but I've learned what the weaknesses are with the Garmin and I'm happy with it.

Yep, this is the difference in beam width... Unfortunately in an 18" dome, which is what most sailboats use size wise, a 5.0 + degree beam is what you usually get.. If you went to an open array your radar targets would get even more defined...