Wow, Panbo works! While it’s pure coincidence that two really interesting—though quite different—solid state marine radars were announced yesterday, I got an early head’s up on both and, better yet, Panbot “DavidV”—who turns out to be a principal developer of the Honeywell prototype ss radar seen above—has already helped us understand how it compares to Navico Broadband (see comments). Unfortunately Honeywell’s “Programmable, Pulse Compression, X-Band Radar,” which David just presented at the eNavigation Conference, is not yet even scheduled for production, but, wow, I think you’ll agree that’s likely, if they can get the costs reasonable. The collage above, and bigger here, compares a Furuno 2117 commercial radar working at its .75 nm range (though showing more) with the 40 watt solid state set at 5 nm range, but zoomed in. The boat moved a bit between screen shots but the difference in range resolution seems obvious and amazing.
One reason I wish I were at METS today is that Navico not only debuted its Broadband Radar, but may be running it in their booth. That’s possible because this 18” solid state radar transmits at “1/2000th the power of typical pulse radars.” And it might even generate meaningful images inside that huge show hall as the technology is supposed to be amazingly good at resolving short-range targets (as suggested above). The various Lowrance, Northstar, and Simrad MFDs that are going to be updated to support this scanner will even have a 1/32 nm range. So…high target resolution, very low power draw, almost no dangerous radiation, and no tuning or warm up time needed…is this an interesting development, or what?
When Furuno NavNet 3D was first teased, I didn’t get the “native 3D” part. How could a “true 3D environment” be based on decidedly 2D raster and ENC charts? But I get it now. Whatever you see in NN3D’s conventional top-down 2D view—including routes, AIS targets, radar overlay, etc.—you can also see in 3D. It’s the same data, just tilted and shaded, and easy to fly around in. Which feels different—more “native”, more “true”—than any other 3D navigation I’ve tried before, and much more useful. So I think it’s great that Navionics has apparently developed a way to bring this sort of continuous-zooming, full-detail 3D to a variety of platforms. It’s called Navionics TurboView and I saw the preview above, and bigger here, at FLIBS.
Comments about the Fusion stereo testing reminded me of Poly-Planar’s somewhat similar MRD-70 audio system. With the addition of RD-44 remote head units (see below), plus amps and speakers, it becomes a multi-zone and multi-source system. That is, different zones can use different sources, which the multi-zone Fusion system can not do. Plus it has intercom functions and wireless remotes, and Poly-Planar recently added an improved iPod interface. But no marine, or even automobile, system I can find has caught up to what some iPods can do…
I’ve had fun down in the shop/lab the past couple of days doing a dummy install of a fairly sophisticated Fusion Marine Stereo system, and in the process learned a lot about all the ways you can rig this gear. Impressive! The shot above, bigger here, suggest one possible layout: the MS-IP500 head unit, dual 7” two-way speakers, and the 10” sub-woofer on the big panel in back could put a lot of audio into a sizeable main salon, while the little panel with wired remote and 4” two-ways might be fine for a cozy stateroom. But to really get a feel for the variables, check out the back side of these panels, shown below. However, please don’t proceed if you’re offended by funky wiring (though good enough for testing). And to get totally in the mood you might fire up the same mellow John Lee Hooker mix that was playing in this scene (though wrongly titled in my MP3 collection, and thus on the iPod Touch that’s inside the head unit).
Finessing the MerCruiser Axius joystick is Amanda Marsten, who probably never foresaw this as part of her gig at the PR firm Rushton Gregory. But she brought the perfect blend of boating inexperience and a light touch to the job, and in truth handled the Sea Ray more deftly than some of us old coots who were aboard for the FLIBS demo. Close quarters maneuvering with Axius is truly intuitive, even when you face aft, and switching from regular controls to joystick is as simple as putting the shifts in neutral and grabbing the stick (or vice versa). But this, mind you, was not just the Axius control system Mercury introduced last February, but rather the new Premier version (which so far is pretty invisible online)…
In Fort Lauderdale, Raymarine once again did a great job with sea trials, offering rides aboard a center console equipped with a new A70D chartplotter/fishfinder and SmartPilot X-5 Sport, and the same big G-packing fly bridge yacht they used last year, only now with STX and Super HD radar. While there’s certainly been a lag between the STX pilot introduction and actual shipping products, the series does look good. The new ST70 control head (above) is sexy and gives access to new features like fishing patterns, but some users will appreciate the ability to use older Ray control heads as well, or instead of. In fact, the STX family seems remarkably flexible in terms of boat type and system integration.
Here’s Russ and Fay enjoying the christening of New Morning last August (as did I). They’re now beyond the Gulf Stream en route to Bermuda. It would be nice if they posted a new entry on their blog (via Iridium/XGate, I think) and/or fired off a Spot OK message (which I get a copy of, and also gets plotted on their share page), but I’m confident that all is well.
This old-man-on-a-megayacht shot seems right for my birthday (62!), and also says a lot about what Simrad is up to. The 142’ Richmond Lady sports a passel of Simrad gear, including two GB60 systems with six 19” displays. There’s a lot of detail on this Richmond Yacht page, and you can check out the bigger photo (thanks to Ron Ballanti). Though it’s not online yet, the GB60 will soon be upgraded to the GB65, which will include MAX Pro cartography and support for GRIB files and Navico's Sirius Weather Module (which will pop up in several Navico brands).
Garmin had a working GPSMap 640 at FLIBS, and I found a couple of nice surprises on it. One is that it does AIS plotting, which wasn’t even mentioned on the press release. More important really is the improved touch screen interface. Notice the status labels on the big buttons above; in cases where the only choice is on/off, like Tide/Currents, just tapping the button changes the status. Which beats the hell out of the norm on most Garmin marine units, i.e. tap (or soft key, or Enter) for another screen, choose between on or off, go back to original screen. On the 640, it’s one tap instead of three (or four, if you don’t have touch or soft keys).
