We had a peek at the ST70 Plus a while back, but I got to see them on the water in Miami, and, besides, there's a hot conversation going on about ideal instrument displays over on the forums (warning: gobs 'o' geek talk). My photo --- taken in glaring Florida sunshine, with on-screen crap you normally don't notice included --- doesn't do justice to the display's brightness, VGA resolution, and deep color saturation, but it might actually be more realistic than the glamor shots now available at Raymarine.com. The latter do, however, show many of the Plus's display choices and color palettes. Or "Colours" as they spell it in the King's English, and as mentioned in my shot above. Which does illustrate a bit of the system architecture I was originally confused about (and which is also explained in the now posted manuals). It seems like a flexible and powerful architecture (and hence inherently confusing), and probably a winner...
Airmar's new H2183 heading sensor is motion compensated every which way; i.e. it's a 3-axis solid-state compass integrated with a 3-axis accelerometer and a 3-axis rate gyro. That's news both in terms of real world compass precision and the masthead performance of Airmar's PB200 Weather Station, whose gyro only senses yaw. In fact, while Airmar is pleased with the how well the PB200 seems to work on Dan Corcoran's sailboat, it may not promote the Weather Station to sailors until it can produce a model that incorporates the 3-axis gyro. But the H2183 is shipping now, for about $700 retail, and Airmar claims that its accuracy in "dynamic conditions" --- i.e. on a boat in a seaway --- is "best in class." And it's backing up the claim with the side-by-side testing video snapped above. While the "competitor" compass is not clearly identified, it's almost undoubtedly Maretron's well regarded SC200. The performance gauntlet is slapped down! And if Maretron or Simrad or whoever has a rebuttal, Panbo is ready to run it.
Try as I might, my photograph (click it for bigger) still fails to truly illustrate how sharp and color rich this sample of Raymarine's new A-Series actually is. I haven't yet subjected it to bright sunlight, which may mute the goodness considerably (hey, we've got two feet of snow on the ground here, people, and the snow banks chest high!). But I did bench test it for a couple of hours yesterday, which included feeding it large quantities of NMEA 2000 data (via an STng-to-standard-N2K patch cable). The A57d did well. The well developed C- and E-Series feature/interface set seems to be all here --- V4 update included (and radar excluded) --- if in miniature. Notice, for instance, the COG, Heading, Tide, and Wind arrows around the boat icon. I wouldn't normally use them all at once, but I've always found these graphics useful, given accurate sensors (and wondered why other manufacturers didn't steal them)...
I got aboard a demo of the new Raymarine C-Series Widescreens last week and was fairly impressed. While I don't really care that these 16 x 9 aspect ratio screens are "theater like", I do believe in getting the biggest display possible, and this format helps, because the fit-onto-helm constraint is usually vertical. (You can see demo boat helm here.) The format also seems to work well with some styles of split screen navigation, as I attempted to illustrate above. If I'd had more time I'd have put both chart and radar in look-ahead modes, and set the soft key menu to auto hide. Note that the screen, at 1280 x 800 pixels, looks sharper than my photo shows, but is purportedly still about as bright as the existing C-Series. Raymarine has tons on the new MFDs here, and I have some niggles below...
It's a lousy photo (even clicked larger), but amazing once you understand it. Notice the piling somewhat hidden behind Navico Broadband Radar engineer Don Korte and right off the bow of yesterday's demo boat. Then check out the screen of the Lowrance HDS 10 slightly obscured by my new colleague Chris Woodward (who writes for Sport Fishing). It's delivering a clean target plot of the piling less than 30' from the 18" scanner dome! I saw this sort of extraordinary near-range performance all over Biscayne Bay yesterday. The little scanner easily resolved a quarter mile string of channel pilings like this one, and all the boats using the channel, and it separated a 40' sailboat close to a low shore over a half mile away. And that was all in complete auto mode; with a little tweaking we could sometimes see crab pot buoys like the one lower left in the photo, or gulls sitting on calm water.
PB200 with VHF extension pole for mounting atop a masthead
I am writing to share my excitement about a new product from Airmar, tested aboard my 39 foot sailboat this past October-November. The Airmar PB200 is a compact masthead sensor that includes an ultrasonic (no moving parts) wind sensor, solid state compass, GPS receiver and more, along with a 3-axis accelerometer. It has an NMEA-0183 output that I found compatible with my Raymarine instrument suite. Airmar doesn't market this for use on a sailboat, but when I learned about the new version of this powerboat product, I got excited about the potential to make my autopilot much more useful when sailing short-handed. Thanks in part to Panbo, I got the opportunity to evaluate a beta version on my own sailboat...
I've had impressive results with the Tacktick Micronet system on the Annie G., but the gear is expensive. Good then that Tacktick has introduced an economy version of the T101 wind system, called the mn30 and/or T033 (click on photo above for larger version). The nifty solar-powered, wireless masthead sensor is the same, but the display is powered from a boat's 12v supply instead of solar cells. Which seems like a reasonable trade for a discount of over $400 retail, and might even be preferable on boats where the display doesn't get sufficient sunlight. Actually, there may be some other features missing from the mn30/T033 that I haven't found yet. But I do know that it supports basic calibration like offset and speed %, and can integrate with a Micronet wireless speedo or NMEA box (& GPS) for True Wind readings. Here's the manual PDF and U.S. distributor Ocean Equipment's listing.
Some boaters don’t like multifunction displays—the theory being that several dedicated devices will never leave a skipper functionless—and thus I’m sometimes asked to recommend a standalone radar. Which is tough, as the recreational models from Furuno, JRC, and Raymarine that I used to be familiar with all seem to be history. Well, check out Si-Tex’s new T-900…
Photographing a brochure leads to distortions (thanks regardless to Richard “Widescreen” Brain), but use your imagination to square up and sharpen the new Raymarine ST70+ image above. Then understand that this 6.5” 640 x 400 pixel screen is capable of showing all the SeaTalkNG/NMEA 2000 navigation, engine, and systems data promised in the original ST70, and I think you’ll agree that this is a welcome product indeed. But where are the control buttons?
All hail Richard Brain. While the Consumer Electronics Show, year-end “best new…” lists and patent searches may all offer 2009 marine electronics possibilities, the real deal—mainly a passel of very interesting Raymarine preview products—is being shown at the London Boat Show. And Richard was kind enough to collect brochures, photograph them, and email them to me for your Panbo pleasure. So let’s thank Richard and say hello to Ray’s new “Widescreen” C Series, which is truly different from the original…
