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Louise Coulson writes:
> >We have a 40 foot trawler with an old, old radar unit (the kind you stick
> >your face in the viewer) that we need to update.
>
> We put a radar onboard last year, and after much research, we began to look
> at the fishing fleet here in Gloucester as opposed to the pleasure boats.
> The fishermen use the Furuno domes with a CRT, while the pleasure boaters
> tend to lean toward the Raytheon domes with CRT.
>
> They had similar features, but the Raytheon seemed to have more "toys." It
> was hard to decide between these two units, but we thought that we would
> follow those who spend their lives on the water and depend on coming home in
> New England fog with their radar.
I opted for a Raytheon R-20X (the model prior to the current R-20XX)
and find it to be a solid, straight-ahead unit. The R-20XX has lots
of "user friendly" (sic) menus and so on which, IMHO, does seem to get
in the way. But then, I'm used to my unit and only use the XX on a
friend's boat rarely so I'm not used to it's quirks. No doubt Dennis
might say the same about my X. <g> I passed on the Furuno in part
because of the "marble" trackball which seemed much to loose to try to
cope with while sloshing around in a sea or running chop.
> In the end, the one that works with the fewest repairs is the best you can
> get, and you probably could find that out from a repair place. When you are
> 20 miles out in a fog, you don't want to worry if the unit is going to work
> for you.
Amen!
Rick
