Raymarine has radically redesigned its A-Series of small plotters and plotter/fishfinders, adding AIS tracking, internal “high-sensitivity” GPS receivers, Sirius Satellite Weather and Audio capability, and many of the interface improvements seen in the recent V4 software update to the C- and E-Series. The units will come with Navionics Gold cartography built
Lowrance Broadband Sounderowrance has not lost its innovative scrappiness under Navico ownership. In fact it was the latter’s CEO, Jens-Thomas Pietralla, who dubbed the new Broadband Sounder a “disruptive technology.” Now, confusingly, this $799 black-box fishfinder, which networks to all current Lowrance displays, is not
Airmar product manager Mark Reedenaur is showing off the company’s floating test lab.”Come on, Mark, can’t you just tell me which is the best fishfinder?!?” I couldn’t help making that plea when I realized what a fantastic floating fishfinder lab we were headed out to sea in. Before launching the 24-footer into the Piscataqua
Raymarine DSM 400Raymarine’s powerhouse DSM 400 black-box fishfinder weighs 27 pounds, contains four independent digital sonar transceivers, and can pump up to 3 kW of ping power on 28, 38, or 50 kHz and two on 185 or 200 kHz. All of which makes it particularly adept at handling some of the high-end Airmar transducer features
Raymarine E Series V4 Multifunction Navigation Display SoftwareIt was pure luck that my April column on maintenance (“Servicing the Circuitry”) illustrated how easy it is to update a Raymarine E-Series; then along came V4, a free firmware upgrade
Raymarine A60The 5.7-inch, dual-function A60 is only a minor model shift from 2006’s 6.5-inch A65, but electronics designs can age well, particularly when software and value improve. It was interesting to test an A60 side by side with the fairly equivalent, if adolescent, Garmin 545s. The A60 has all the dedicated and soft keys
The iWay 600c is a navigate-anywhere portable plotter featuring a bright five-inch touchscreen and a 30-gigabyte hard drive nearly filled with cartography. That includes Lowrance’s complete NauticPath U.S. coastal charts (significantly improved from the original version), more than 3,000 U.S. lakes, all U.S. and Canadian roads, 5.5 million POIs, and even photo
The new top of Humminbird’s fast-growing electronics line seems capable, as deconstructing its model name suggests. SI means that the 957c, besides doing “normal” dual-frequency fishfinding, can push out a wide, 600-kHz swath whose returns build a photo-like “sonar image” of bottom structure up to “150 feet down and 240 feet to each side.” Note the detail on
Furuno’s claims about the benefits of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) in its new 5.6-inch FCV-620—its ability to suppress noise and maximize automatic fishfinding in varying conditions—sound a lot like Raymarine boasting about its High Definition Digital technology. So I was intrigued to test the 620 side by side—same transducer—with a
This article originally appeared in the November 2005 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
This article originally appeared in the November 2005 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
This article originally appeared in the November 2005 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
This article originally appeared in the November 2005 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
This article originally appeared in the November 2005 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
This article originally appeared in the November 2005 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
Raymarine has radically redesigned its A-Series of small plotters and plotter/fishfinders, adding AIS tracking, internal “high-sensitivity” GPS receivers, Sirius Satellite Weather and Audio capability, and many of the interface improvements seen in the recent V4 software update to the C- and E-Series. The units will come with Navionics Gold cartography built
Lowrance Broadband Sounderowrance has not lost its innovative scrappiness under Navico ownership. In fact it was the latter’s CEO, Jens-Thomas Pietralla, who dubbed the new Broadband Sounder a “disruptive technology.” Now, confusingly, this $799 black-box fishfinder, which networks to all current Lowrance displays, is not
Airmar product manager Mark Reedenaur is showing off the company’s floating test lab.”Come on, Mark, can’t you just tell me which is the best fishfinder?!?” I couldn’t help making that plea when I realized what a fantastic floating fishfinder lab we were headed out to sea in. Before launching the 24-footer into the Piscataqua
Raymarine DSM 400Raymarine’s powerhouse DSM 400 black-box fishfinder weighs 27 pounds, contains four independent digital sonar transceivers, and can pump up to 3 kW of ping power on 28, 38, or 50 kHz and two on 185 or 200 kHz. All of which makes it particularly adept at handling some of the high-end Airmar transducer features
Raymarine E Series V4 Multifunction Navigation Display SoftwareIt was pure luck that my April column on maintenance (“Servicing the Circuitry”) illustrated how easy it is to update a Raymarine E-Series; then along came V4, a free firmware upgrade
Raymarine A60The 5.7-inch, dual-function A60 is only a minor model shift from 2006’s 6.5-inch A65, but electronics designs can age well, particularly when software and value improve. It was interesting to test an A60 side by side with the fairly equivalent, if adolescent, Garmin 545s. The A60 has all the dedicated and soft keys
The iWay 600c is a navigate-anywhere portable plotter featuring a bright five-inch touchscreen and a 30-gigabyte hard drive nearly filled with cartography. That includes Lowrance’s complete NauticPath U.S. coastal charts (significantly improved from the original version), more than 3,000 U.S. lakes, all U.S. and Canadian roads, 5.5 million POIs, and even photo
The new top of Humminbird’s fast-growing electronics line seems capable, as deconstructing its model name suggests. SI means that the 957c, besides doing “normal” dual-frequency fishfinding, can push out a wide, 600-kHz swath whose returns build a photo-like “sonar image” of bottom structure up to “150 feet down and 240 feet to each side.” Note the detail on
Furuno’s claims about the benefits of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) in its new 5.6-inch FCV-620—its ability to suppress noise and maximize automatic fishfinding in varying conditions—sound a lot like Raymarine boasting about its High Definition Digital technology. So I was intrigued to test the 620 side by side—same transducer—with a
This article originally appeared in the November 2005 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
This article originally appeared in the November 2005 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
This article originally appeared in the November 2005 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
This article originally appeared in the November 2005 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
This article originally appeared in the November 2005 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
This article originally appeared in the November 2005 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
