ais reciever advice please

[Brian]

No-one is saying one is better than the other. It's just different. It tells you some things that RADAR doesn't.
If you are just blasting from A to B, enjoying the day-you would probably be wasting your hard-earned.
If, however, you are on a long and possibly boring passage, for instance from Mounts Bay in Cornwall to Kinsale is Ireland, AIS gives you something else to "worry" about.
RADAR is also more expensive than AIS -although that is NOT a reason to select one over the other!

[Pete7]

The current Raymarine Radar is £1200 and that assumes you have a chart plotter to connect it to. Add the cost of the mount if you need it and it compares quite well with AIS. What will be nice is when they roll out AIS to fixed objects like lighthouses and key channel markers, which is happening.

On the yacht I could mount radar on the mast out of the way of people and expect a good range. On a rib bouncing around through the waves, not so sure. Oh and you need someone who knows how to use it, your crew may not.

[Last Tango]

Had both on boats and given choice of one or the other I'd have AIS.
The AIS transmission makes your position and track visible to anyone with a PC or phone and it's display of surrounding vessels is not "open to interpretation". It's about a third of the price of radar and much easier to install. I concede it won't show every vessel but you'd be surprised how many "non-compulsory fit" vessels have AIS (including the AW lifeboats).

[mikehhogg]

I am not totally against AIS but another disadvantage is a small yacht could programme the transponder to say for example MV CIARA. you see MV and think trawler yet there is no trawler to be seen anywhere to further add confusion .Radar would be my first choice but cost is prohibitive .Recently a US Naval vessel collided with a freighter somewhere in the world.They have Radar,GPS AIS etc etc yet they still collided because no actual person was looking or keeping watch.

[beamishken]

I guess the comments confirm what I thought that in the absence of Radar then AIS is nice to have depending on where you boat. If you boat outside of busy shipping areas then I'd imagine its far less usefull. I guess the solent and channel where there are more ships then it could be usefull. As for increasing your safety in a dead in the water situation I certainly wouldnt rely on transmitting ais to prevent me being run down by a commercial vessel. First thing to do if your dead in the water would be make a pan pan or a mayday if you think your in imminent danger if being run down.
For our area of operation I can't see much benefit from AIS whereas I have found radar to be useful although I accept at greater cost. I work on commercial ships and have been on the bridge many times when helms are taking little notice of the way ahead. I wouldnt like to rely on them spotting a target on ais screen or radar for that matter but the vhf usually wakes them up

[Last Tango]

Another "nice to have" feature of the AIS (Icom) is the ability to select a target on the screen and hit the "call" button and it automatically instigates a DSC call to that target.

[Pikey Dave]

I’ve had both Radar & AIS on RIBs & IMO AIS is much much easier & clearer to use on a RIB bouncing along at speed. If you have a “Buddy” with AIS it’s much easier to track them, rather than try & determine what’s what amongst all the clutter. It’s been said before that AIS & Radar aren’t mutually exclusive, they both do very different jobs IMO. In an ideal world, I’d have both, but if I had to choose (especially for a RIB environment) it would be AIS.
All IMO of course.