Conrad
Guru
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2007
- Messages
- 1,972
- Location
- Canada
- Vessel Name
- Blue Sky
- Vessel Make
- Nordic Tugs 42 Hull #001
After having the new Simrad 4G radar installed in January, and having just wrapped up the summer's cruising, I thought I would give a quick review of its capability.
The close-in definition of targets seems to continue to be excellent, and out to 15 miles also seems to be very good. Beyond that may be good as well, but we never really checked that out.
But...it fails badly on some very fundamental capabilities.
There are options to run the radar on course up, north up, or heading up. Normally on most systems once you have set the orientation you want, it stays in place. On this system, when I set it to north up, my preference, it reverts back to heading up as soon as it is powered down. Very frustrating when you want to do the occasional side to side (Chart/radar) and have to reconfigure the orientation. My previous Furuno did that flawlessly.
Also, on radar overlay (of the chart) there is no capability for trails, which for me is a huge issue, since that is very helpful when navigating busy waters. There are trails available but only when using the radar by itself. Again, my previous Furuno did that flawlessly.
There is also an issue with the radar overlay not aligning with the chart; again a huge issue although that may be resolved with a new heading sensor.
But overall I would be hesitant to recommend the Simrad 4G given it its lack of basic functionality.
The close-in definition of targets seems to continue to be excellent, and out to 15 miles also seems to be very good. Beyond that may be good as well, but we never really checked that out.
But...it fails badly on some very fundamental capabilities.
There are options to run the radar on course up, north up, or heading up. Normally on most systems once you have set the orientation you want, it stays in place. On this system, when I set it to north up, my preference, it reverts back to heading up as soon as it is powered down. Very frustrating when you want to do the occasional side to side (Chart/radar) and have to reconfigure the orientation. My previous Furuno did that flawlessly.
Also, on radar overlay (of the chart) there is no capability for trails, which for me is a huge issue, since that is very helpful when navigating busy waters. There are trails available but only when using the radar by itself. Again, my previous Furuno did that flawlessly.
There is also an issue with the radar overlay not aligning with the chart; again a huge issue although that may be resolved with a new heading sensor.
But overall I would be hesitant to recommend the Simrad 4G given it its lack of basic functionality.