Radar is it worth it ?.

[Alan]

I personally believe that Radar is impractical on a RIB shorter than say 8.5m. Firstly you need a substantial radar arch or extension to your A frame to a) get a decent range and b) avoid microwaving your crew every few seconds! More fundamentally at any speed and in any sea its bloody difficult to use if the boat is bouncing all over the place as medium/smaller RIBS do. My experience is limited to Cyanide and whilst its a good piece of kit it was still difficult to use in rough seas. And thats on a 9.5 RIB. Brian is right that given a calm and boring passage its one more toy to play with though!

Alan

[Rene]

Hi
just my experience on this subject,

I have a radar on a 6 meter Rib, with the dome mounted on the a-frame, that gives me about 5-6 miles coverage, depending on the height of the target of course.

Normaly i have the range set to 1.5 miles, because then I will be able to see the targets just infront of me, and the other stuff further out, i will think about them when I get closer.

In the dark or in the fog, the radar is the number one navigation equipment. But you have to remember to use the radar even when the sun is shining, and you are able the see further that the radar. Because if you can't read the screen to knoww what the little dot's are in a sunny day, you won't know in the fog either. So normaly my radar is started up together with my GPS as soon as I leave port. And I wouldn't miss it. When your out there the fog can come in on you pretty fast.

And if you are in the fog, you are normaly going to slow down a bit anyway, so you have time to read the screen, and it can be done even if the boat is jumping around.

Regards
Rene

[Garygee]

Hi folks

Some interesting replies

The boats a 7.8M Ribcraft, inboard diesel so it not that small or light, but still not 9.5 M.

I was planning to have it about 18" above the A frame but I never thought about the vibration. Now I think about it the higher it is the more G the radome sees in relation to the boat and may be more suceptable to oscillation.

As we all do I never plan to go out when its pea soup fog, but was interested how much people used radars. The cost is a bit more than 599 Daniel, more like 2500 ! as I was looking at the Raymarine RL70 Plus intergrated to the chartplotter to give overlay, MARPA, linked cursers etc. (they dont tell you you need a 600 quid fast fluxgate compass the make everything work toghther!) I think the sets like the JRC1000 may be hard work to use not being same scale, orientation etc as the chart plotter.

From your comments I plan to ask some question at Southampton about warranty and A frames. I have already discounted Furuno as they would not give a waranty unless they installed or inspected the work whic put up the price quite a bit.

Things are still out a bit but I think radar has already dropped down my buying list.

Thanks Gary