Richard Cassano wrote:

>Rick,
>
>[...]The reason I'm interested in Koden is cost - Koden has
>many very nice features and the price is much less than the big guys. I
>spoke to Greg at Rose Point Navigation, (Coastal Explorer) and the next big
>change in their navigation software is collaboration with Koden called
>Radar-pc. If you search Koden's web site and click on Radar-pc it will tell
>you all the specifications and features.
>
>http://www.koden-electronics.co.jp/eng/radarpc-e.html
>
>

Hmmm... the truth is, at this point almost all radars are really digital
animals much beyond the actual transmitters and receivers, even the
R-20X works this way as far as I can tell. But it looks as though
manufacturers are waking up to the advantage of making the data stream
accessable to, for example VNS or CE. At any rate, this does look like
an attractive alternative to buying one of those spendy "does everything
but make the bed" units sold by Raymarine, et al.

>This is the same deal as Nobeltec has with Koden and a proven technology.
>I'm not a fan of integration, but I must start looking at new radar for a
>fall project and the CE/Koden radar may be a less expensive solution to the
>big integrated radar systems. Whatever I do I need to get the chart in the
>cockpit and if I can accomplish this by getting the radar up there as well
>on the same screen that would be great. The "overlay" feature is nice but
>not a major selling point for me.
>
I guess the real questions are a) does it work (I have less than 100%
faith in Nobeltec, after my misadventures with troubleshooting VNS
crashes) and b) how long will it keep working (both the radar and the PC
software)? Good luck in sorting all of that out!

>Our present radar unit is a Furuno 1800 -
>very basic - and 19 years old. Even though it works ok it still is a CRT
>monitor that soaks up a lot of power. It lacks any of the new autotune, APRA
>and watchman features as well.
>
"Eh" on the power consumption issue. CRT or LCD, the draw for many of
these radars is the same: about 4A. It's the transmitter that's the
real power sucker, not the display (although an LCD display with the
backlight off is more frugal with current). Laptops and PC's aren't
going to be much better on power consumption, in connection with a radar
banging away at 4kw, than the 1800. Autotune... again, in my experience
"eh". The R-20X has tuning knobs and I find that, once the unit's
really warmed up, things are quite stable. I guess ARPA and so on are
nice to have but in a target-rich area like the Chesapeake, I can see
the radar simply going catatonic from the work load. [laugh]

Oh, one thing to keep in mind with radar being overlayed on a PC: the
a/p heading sensor is too slow to keep the overlay up to date on the
heading (leads to a "slipped" image). Standard flux gate sensors work
at a rate of one reading / second; I've been told repeatedly this isn't
fast enough for [turning] rate determination. Plan on updating to a
faster heading sensor (and there goes another "boat unit" or two...
[grin]).

>Considering Coastal Explorer is about to
>implement this business plan there may be some intro prices that would make
>it worth jumping for now rather than wait for the fall.
>
>
Good point!!

Cheers,
   Rick


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Received on Wed Mar 22 16:32:04 2006