Hi,
I am active on other boat forums, and here is my first Panbo post.
I previously had an older Raymarine system on a 39 ft Sea Ray.
I have been using a Simrad 4G on a 44 ft power boat we purchased a year ago. I think the system is great overall, but for long range it has its limitations and even Simrad aknolwedfes that. For the price it is a good system.
We run the boat often, so effective Marpa tracking is important, and I have finally starte to test it out in the bay during the day.
Long story short, I am finding some issues, and I have read a few accounts by others as well regarding accurate vectors. There is a very detailed write up by a person with a nordhaven 60 out there.
Are others finding the same issues with its Marpa function?
How about with the new Halo system?
In my experience, small radars are pretty rough at MARPA. The calculations are quite difficult as is, and especially so given the crude horizontal resolution of a short radar antenna. I have not noticed that 4G is worse than the others, but I haven't tested 4G MARPA very much.
But I have heard a lot recently from boaters like you who do think that 4G is especially bad at MARPA and have decided to address it in regular Panbo entry. Hope to write it this week, and hope you'll add your experience in the comments.
Thanks Ben. The article and subsequent discussion was excellent. I learned a lot about this topic.