Alternatively, if you work in confined waters a less powerful and wider-beam model would do, giving you more closer-in information. If you regularly go offshore you may want to have a greater range to your radar and be able to distinguish other boats so a more powerful unit of 4kW or above with a narrow beam would be ideal. Of course, the narrower the beam the more precise the area scanned, so a narrow beam might differentiate two vessels close together, whereas a wider beam won’t.īEST RADAR FOR YOU When considering radar, think about your own boating. In the vertical plane, beams are typically angled at around 10° to 30°, or more to compensate for the motion of the boat. The size of their beam (both horizontal and vertical) typically is a few degrees, with the aforementioned Furuno being 6.2° wide. Scanners are rated from around 2.2kW (the Furnuno 1623) to more than 25kW. The popular analogy used is of a light beam - the more powerful the torch, the more that can be seen. Traditionally on small yachts scanners are enclosed in domes, called radomes, and for motorboats and larger vessels the naked (and more powerful) rotating arm scanners are used. These multifunction displays (MFD) such as Garmin’s latest 5000 touchscreen range come with high-definition graphics and are compliant to the latest NMEA 2000 standards, allowing them to be interfaced with other manufacturers’ kit.īIGGER THE BETTER Size indeed matters when it comes to radars, so the bigger the scanner the more information you receive.
#Garmin homeport 2.2 Pc#
More likely, the radar will integrate with a chartplotter or PC and, via NMEA protocols, be able to combine GPS and electronic charting at once. However, Furuno has a popular entry-level set in this area: the Furuno 1623. To begin with, do you want a simple standalone set? These are not so common nowadays because radars are becoming part of integrated navigation systems.
But there are several choices to be made when looking at radar.
SYSTEM CHOICES For the sailor, the benefits are several, including clearer displays and a choice of add-on technologies to layer over the top, such as MARPA collision-avoidance. Leading brand Navico took this process one major step further by replacing the magnetron with a Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) transmitter to further enhance the quality of the emission frequency and dubbed their technology as ‘broadband’. However, this has also led to improvements in displaying the data, and to all the major brands - Furuno, Garmin, Lowrance, Northstar, Raymarine and Simrad - to have digital radars. This has been dubbed as ‘digital’ technology by manufacturers, but in reality is an enhancement of an existing process.
#Garmin homeport 2.2 drivers#
Range is measured by recording the time between the pulse transmitted and the echo received back.ĭIGITAL RADAR One of the main drivers for recent development was tighter regulation, around 2003, of the frequencies used -9.3 to 9.4gGhz (known as X-band) - which prompted manufacturers to be more rigorous and resulted in increased processing power of the scanner-transmitter technology. The black box in radars, the magnetron, generates this pulse, which is fired out via the rotating antenna that typically runs at 24 or 48rpm.