Well, the plotter and radar is installed but testing in the marina is useless because of clutter. I really wanted to try it out in more open water so we did a little cruise over to Manion Bay on Bowen Island. The radar works great and here are some observations:
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Even though it is marked as a 24 mile radar, it indicates on the screen up to 36Nm. |
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I have found normal operation in full or automatic gain to be too intense but I could see the mountains on Vancouver Island quite clearly - at 26Nm. I found, for those specific circumstances, that between 40 and 50% gain would be ideal. |
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I could see the boat's wake on radar while traveling at hull speed. That would be no more than a 1ft wake. The radar also showed two crap trap floats when we entered Manion Bay. |
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Philip took the dinghy back to Sewell's and I could follow him all the way on the radar, even when he was more than a mile away from the boat. Surprisingly though, it often 'lost' the Sewell's rental boats (14-17ft GlassCrafts) and it convinced me to add radar reflectors to Kuredu. |
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Daylight/full sun readability of the screen is excellent, from any angle. |
We dropped anchor in Manion Bay and Philip and Megan had a swim with the geese.
