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Hoo'sdave

Member
Dec 4, 2007
241
Mechanicsville Va/Deltaville, VA
Boat Info
340 Sundancer Garmin touch screen Garmin HD radar
Engines
454 Mercruiser
I am looking to upgrade the Ray marine RL70 to an E80 with Sirius weather and a 4k dome radar. Does anyone have any pro's or con's concerning an upgrade?
 
Hoo'sdave said:
I am looking to upgrade the Ray marine RL70 to an E80 with Sirius weather and a 4k dome radar. Does anyone have any pro's or con's concerning an upgrade?
Click to expand...

I am going through this right now. I was originally going to go with the E80 and ended up getting the Garmin 4010 instead. I ended up with a bigger display for less money and the ease of use is much nicer on the Garmin. I also am fairly sure that the Garmin radomes are significantly cheaper.

Here is my install thread.

http://clubsearay.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11282
 
There's also Furuno. Good stuff and you get to choose between Navionics Gold or C-MAP NT. Ray uses Navionics for some products and C-Map for others. Garmin gives you a choice of proprietary Garmin or proprietary Garmin -- and they don't discuss their data sources.

Best regards,
Frank C
 
I've been doing some reading on the Furuno NN3D stuff. There is a whole section on it in this months issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.

It's hard to recommend or discuss electronics without knowing how you boat and what you want to do...
 
Oh yeah... that being said...

Raymarine sucks, Garmin is... well "consumer", Lowrance is Wal-Mart quality, and Furuno is blowing their reputation on a botched NN3d launch...

I think that's a good summary.
 
I should clarify my Raymarine comment. I've had a lot of trouble with their crappy fluxgate compass/heading sensor as well as the RayNav 300 GPS system. I don't have any experience with the newer E-Series systems and the displays do look nice and bright. They are, however, still using these crappy external components which to me puts them in the "Raymarine sucks" category. I've replace the RN 300 GPS with a Raystar 125 GPS and just use the RN 300 as a display now... it started going to poop after 2 years which is not acceptable IMO. The fluxgate has been replaced several times and needs constant adjustment but I've discussed that in other threads. I have a 4 kw open array radar and works "ok" but some of the newer radars out I've read about (Furuno) are incredible. The Furuno one appears to be able to have two seperate settings for two different windows on the same antenna. You can have one window with the gain cranked up looking for birds and another window set for navigation... how cool is that?! So if you like to fish, that's an important feature. Also, the components that Furuno is coming out with show they are serious about everything being high quality and accurate. Look at the sat compass products they've come out with to tie into their radars, fishfinders, and chartplotters.... looks like great technology....
 
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Like Gary says, buy what is appropriate for you. For me, Garmin was fine I don't need dual window radar with disparate gain settings. Heck I don't even need radar! I wanted a big display that was easy to see in all weather/light conditions, basic GPS functions and the ability to add things like weather and HD sounder. Garmin was perfect for that. If you do trips like Gary then you probably need more advanced equipment.
 
I just want a heading sensor and GPS to have a longer life than a few years. I've determined my fluxgate is a democrat as it changes direction every 15 minutes.... and then blames the autopilot.
 
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