Black box VHF

[b_arrington]

I'm expecting that my Northstar NS100 is going to conk out in the not-to-distant future. I've patched together the microphone cable, but it won't last forever....

With limited room on my dash I'm planning on replacing it with another black-box-style VHF. The ones I've seen so far are the Garmin VHF 300 and the ICOM M400BB VHF. Anyone have experience or opinions on either of these models, or could suggest an alternate?

Not at it makes much difference, but I have a Garmin 4208 connected to the NS100 via NMEA 0183 for DSC purposes.

 

[Greg]

I went with the Simrad RS90 / HS35 mainly because my previous black box handset cords were shot. The HS35 is cordless so you can walk around the boat with it like a portable, but still have the full power and big antenna.

I still haven't hooked them up yet, so I can't comment on performance.

 

[BigBoysToys]

The Raymarine Ray260 is a viable option as well. I replaced my NS100 with a Ray260 for one season before the Simrad upgrade. The Ray260 worked great. I still have it if you're interested. I will say that the speaker is slightly smaller so a trim plate will be required but I think that applies to all of the black box models. At least all the ones I researched were slightly smaller.