I work for an ocean shipping company. Our Ships have two X band and one S band radar all with ARPA, but they are not good at nor were they designed for picking up small targets at medium range. The pirate skiffs are typically fibreglass but the do have metal outboard motors.
I have been looking at the Furuno UHD radars, the Raymarine C-90 with 4kw Digital dome and the Garmin digital radars. Seems like the NAVICO broadband radars are not some good at this medium range.
Range and bearing accuracy is not important, picking up the small target at long a distance as possible is key
What expeierince or suggestions can you give me
TIA
Ed
Hi Ed,
Drop me an email andy@excelsiormarine.co.uk
We have done some tests in the uk with this and can give you some details.
Andy
Furuno's new DRS series of digital radar units should do well for this application. The interface with the Navnet 3D line of displays and black box units and interconnect with standard NMEA0183 or NMEA2000 cabling so you don't have the issue of the longer scanner to display multiconductor interconnect cable. Add in MaxSea software and you can monitor and control the radar through your vessels Ethernet system.
I know this is an old post, but is there still a need here for an improved detection capability?
Gary
Kelvin Hughes Sharpeye very good at picking up small targets and is leaps and bounds ahead of others specially when combined with enhanced target detection.
I was on a ship with this a few weeks ago and we could see small ribs at 5 - 6 nm
Any idea what the sea state was when you saw the boats at 5-6 nmi?
Yes, we are still looking for a radar that's good at picking up small targets
EuroDriver,
Would you mind contacting me at radar@sysplan.com? I'd like to talk more about what you're looking for.
Gary
sea state was a force 8 and etd mode made all the clutter vanish was totally shocked
KH Radar
http://i1081.photobucket.com/albums/j342/muzzauk19882011/SinglePPIETD.jpg