Radar Question

[sbw1]

What are you waiting for SBW1 !!?? Chilly Blues in Grand Haven this weekend....it is a "rule" to be in the water by then! See you on the water soon.

Had my right knee replaced 7 weeks ago. I'm shooting for a May 15 launch. Right now, I'm afraid that I can get on the boat, but probably not off. Would not be a good situation!

 

[Gocloud9]

I spent the better part of last summer dealing with a similar radar issue. After days of banging my head against fiberglass trying to figure out what was going on I finally solved it. The cable between the my C70 and the radar unit was not one single cable. It is fact was two cables connected thru a plastic two piece screw togethor connector that was hidden behind a wiring access panel near the base on the radar arch on the starboard side. After finding the connector (cursing the design engineer for hiding it) and opening it up I found numerous corroded connections inside. A little CRC spray cleaner later, problem solved.

Hopefully this helps.

 

[tdschafer]

I spent the better part of last summer dealing with a similar radar issue. After days of banging my head against fiberglass trying to figure out what was going on I finally solved it. The cable between the my C70 and the radar unit was not one single cable. It is fact was two cables connected thru a plastic two piece screw togethor connector that was hidden behind a wiring access panel near the base on the radar arch on the starboard side. After finding the connector (cursing the design engineer for hiding it) and opening it up I found numerous corroded connections inside. A little CRC spray cleaner later, problem solved.

Hopefully this helps.

Welcome aboard Cloud!! It's nice to see someone join up to help a fellow member. Once again it's things like this that make this site so great!!Thanks for the post!!

 

[Vince_nj1]

I spent the better part of last summer dealing with a similar radar issue. After days of banging my head against fiberglass trying to figure out what was going on I finally solved it. The cable between the my C70 and the radar unit was not one single cable. It is fact was two cables connected thru a plastic two piece screw togethor connector that was hidden behind a wiring access panel near the base on the radar arch on the starboard side. After finding the connector (cursing the design engineer for hiding it) and opening it up I found numerous corroded connections inside. A little CRC spray cleaner later, problem solved.

Hopefully this helps.

This is his first post and it doesn't pass the snif test. I would ignore it and not waste time hunting for this hidden connector since is does not exist. There is 1 continues cable that runs from the MFS unit to the radome.

I have been living with this same problem for a few years. When I bought my boat the radome was removed for shipping. The trucker/repo guy cut the cable up at the radome. I purchased a connector kit from Raymarine which turned out to be a little plug that I had to reinsert all of the wires into. One of the wires was actually a fiber optic cable. (white one in the pic) By a small miracle I got it to work, but it only lasted 1 season.




I tried repeatedly to get it to work again but couldn’t. I thought that my batteries were too weak to power up the unit and replaced all of them. Still didn't work. I finally gave up and called a Raymarine repair guy to come and fix it. His solution was to replace the cable. I had 2 options for cables a heavy duty and a light duty. I was told that my radome would run using the light duty cable (Heavy duty cable has 2 red power wires and the light duty cable has 1 power wire.) He recommended using the light duty cable since it would be easier to snake ought the radar arch. I gave him my credit card number and scheduled the appointment. The day came but it got rained out and never got rescheduled. So I purchased a new cable and installed it myself. The very first thing I did was to hook the new cable up to the radome and then to the MFS to ensure that it was the cable and it worked

I disconnected it and spent another 6 hours trying to snake it up through the radar arch. On my boat the area just below the starboard speaker behind the drivers seat was filled with wires with a very small opening to run cables. I had a very hard time passing the new cable through that space. When I finally finished I reinstalled the new cable and IT DIDN"T WORK!!!

I gave up!

As a side note I replace all 4 of my batteries with AGMs and still experience a slight hesitation when starting one of my engines. (I think it is the port, but I am not sure) I double checked all the connections on the batteries and even removed and sanded the ground connection on the engine block. I tightened all of power cables on the bus on the bulkhead and nothing changed. I as suspicious that I have a bad conncetion somewhere that is preventing the Radar from starting up.

 

[CAMELLA]

Vince,
Thats crazy! So it still doesn't work correctly? Where does your power cable come from? That's one thing Raymarine wants me to check.

 

[Sum Escape]

Had my right knee replaced 7 weeks ago. I'm shooting for a May 15 launch. Right now, I'm afraid that I can get on the boat, but probably not off. Would not be a good situation!

OK, valid reason to be dry docked yet! Good luck with the recovery and see you on the water soon! Maybe we will get our March 80 degree weather back by May 15!

 

[Vince_nj1]

Vince,
Thats crazy! So it still doesn't work correctly? Where does your power cable come from? That's one thing Raymarine wants me to check.

The Radome gets its power from the back of the C120 MFS via the cable. One continuous run.


On my original install I needed to replace the connection plug:





You can see that the cable was in bad shape, so I when the radar stopped working I suspected that my attempt to replace the connector was the problem. That little white wire contains a fiber optic cable that needed to be stripped back leaving about 3 strands of fiber optic cable. Very difficult to do.



The power RED wires and ground cables Black wires get connected to the Radome via the 4 little pinch clips inside the Radome. You can see that that I had lost some of the conduit on one of the ground wires.



The replacement cable that I purchased had the 8 pin connector already installed, but since I opted to go for the light cable, my new cable only has 1 red and 1 black vs 2 reds and 2 blacks which was the original install.

I believe Raymarine is asking you to check the connections of the 2 red and 2 black wires up in the radome.

 

[Gocloud9]

This is his first post and it doesn't pass the snif test. I would ignore it and not waste time hunting for this hidden connector since is does not exist. There is 1 continues cable that runs from the MFS unit to the radome.

Yes this was my first post. Sorry for trying to help.
My boat (a 2006 300DA) has two cables joined by a connector hidden behind an access panel. I finally figured it out when I tried to buy a replacement cable and looked in the parts manual and found 2 part numbers. Just saying, if there are two cables on mine there might also be on the 420DA of similar age.

1539055 EXTENSION, CABLE 5METER SEATALK (RADAR ONLY)​

(RAYMARINE - C70 GPS CHARTPLOTTER & RADAR)​

1747376 CABLE, SEATALK 5M (FOR RADAR ONLY)​

(RAYMARINE - C70 GPS CHARTPLOTTER & RADAR

 

[CAMELLA]

I think I figured it out the problem. I turned on the C120, pressed MENU, went to RADAR SETUP and pressed OK, then I held the OK button (roughly 5 seconds) until SCANNER TYPE was displayed. I selected my scanner 4KW Open Array and it seems to be working fine now. I am hoping the C120 wasn't sure what scanner I had. I turned it on and off a couple of times and it started right away every time.

 

[Vince_nj1]

Yes this was my first post. Sorry for trying to help.
My boat (a 2006 300DA) has two cables joined by a connector hidden behind an access panel. I finally figured it out when I tried to buy a replacement cable and looked in the parts manual and found 2 part numbers. Just saying, if there are two cables on mine there might also be on the 420DA of similar age.

GoCloud. Please accept my apology since it appears that you are legitimate. This forum occasionally gets hit with BS posts and since it was your first post it seemed suspicious. On my boat the cable is a a straight run to my closed radome. If I read this diagram correctly, there appears to be a junction on the cable for an open array. Your suggestion might apply to this issue.

View attachment 24745

 

[CAMELLA]

GoCloud. Please accept my apology since it appears that you are legitimate. This forum occasionally gets hit with BS posts and since it was your first post it seemed suspicious. On my boat the cable is a a straight run to my closed radome. If I read this diagram correctly, there appears to be a junction on the cable for an open array. Your suggestion might apply to this issue.

View attachment 24745

Vince,
I recommend trying what I did to see if yours is the same problem.

 

[jrirvine1]

I think I figured it out the problem. I turned on the C120, pressed MENU, went to RADAR SETUP and pressed OK, then I held the OK button (roughly 5 seconds) until SCANNER TYPE was displayed. I selected my scanner 4KW Open Array and it seems to be working fine now. I am hoping the C120 wasn't sure what scanner I had. I turned it on and off a couple of times and it started right away every time.

Good thing it wasn't the anti-matter inducer. Scotty says they are very dangerous to work on.

 

[CAMELLA]

After all this time I finally figured out what my problem was, MOISTURE.
The seal is going bad and it's allowing water in. I opened up the array yesterday and let it air out. It now comes on right away. I ordered a new gasket and should be all set. I plan on opening up the unit monthly to inspect and air out.

 

[rpasquarello]

The most common problem is a failure of the flux capacitor.