scooper321
Well-Known Member
Well, it's been a year to the day that I've owned her (Happy Anniversary to me!) so it was time. Finally took out the Raymarine 215 VHF and began putting in a replacement. Too bad, too. The 215 is a nice radio! But the mic cord was deteriorating, like all do, and no replacement to be found. So as Step 1 in a larger electronics upgrade strategy, I bought a Std Horizon GX1600 and located the template. That's when the fun began:
The template worked great. Ignore the hole above my cuts. That's from the 215. I didn't fill it in so that I can later move other small controls (radio remote perhaps?) there. Here's the test fit:
I also ordered a faux wood panel from FP Marine to cover the holes and match the rest of the dash. Used the same GX1600 template (cleverly aligned) and cut that, too.
Tip: when you get devices with templates to use for cutting holes, immediately make many copies of that template. You will often need more than one. I did! Here's the final product, mounted but unconnected electronically.
I simply ran out of time today. But all I have left to wire it up is a couple snips and about 6 crimp/heat shrink connectors. Should go smoothly, I hope! I'm going to connect it to the NMEA0183 outs of my ancient Raymarine 435 GPS to the inputs of the radio, so I get GPS on the display. At a later time, I'll connect it to a new plotter to get GPS and enable DSC. This is just step 1.
Special thanks to CSR and the YouTube vids from BOE on how to cut fiberglass. Especially the parts about covering your to-be-cut area with masking tape, using a fine tooth jigsaw blade and working slowly. Now that I've done this, mounting a MFD should be no problem! It's fishing the radar cable that I don't look forward to doing...
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The template worked great. Ignore the hole above my cuts. That's from the 215. I didn't fill it in so that I can later move other small controls (radio remote perhaps?) there. Here's the test fit:
I also ordered a faux wood panel from FP Marine to cover the holes and match the rest of the dash. Used the same GX1600 template (cleverly aligned) and cut that, too.
Tip: when you get devices with templates to use for cutting holes, immediately make many copies of that template. You will often need more than one. I did! Here's the final product, mounted but unconnected electronically.
I simply ran out of time today. But all I have left to wire it up is a couple snips and about 6 crimp/heat shrink connectors. Should go smoothly, I hope! I'm going to connect it to the NMEA0183 outs of my ancient Raymarine 435 GPS to the inputs of the radio, so I get GPS on the display. At a later time, I'll connect it to a new plotter to get GPS and enable DSC. This is just step 1.
Special thanks to CSR and the YouTube vids from BOE on how to cut fiberglass. Especially the parts about covering your to-be-cut area with masking tape, using a fine tooth jigsaw blade and working slowly. Now that I've done this, mounting a MFD should be no problem! It's fishing the radar cable that I don't look forward to doing...
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk