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GPS units?

rwthomas1

Sustaining Partner
Hello All,
I have a Raymarine 620 monochrome chartplotter on my E38. It WAS a decent unit but is currently screwed up. It seems to get stuck in a "loop" where it reboots every time it gets to a point in the startup process. It does show coordinates if I don't press the continue button during startup so at least I know where I am sort of. Maybe I am being hard on Raymarine but I expect more from an expensive product that many rely on. Its a really nice unit, even if its monochrome with a large screen. Problem is Raymarine want $700 just to LOOK at it! Rediculous. Money would be better spent on a new unit.

Which leads me to which chartplotter? I have several friends in commercial marine businesses and they all swear by Furuno. A little more pricey but industrial strength. I have also considered Navman they supposedly have a new product line with integrated radar, Garmin, Northstar, Lowrance, etc.

Would like to hear any and all suggestions...
Thanks, RT
 

Graham Cole

The Zoomer
Hey Rob,

The 620 was the first of the horizontal screen plotters Raytheon produced, followed by the 630 color plotter and the improved 620+ monochrome unit. We installed these units new in the later '90s and they were pretty impressive then. The original 620 was superseded by the + series to address several faults and as an upgrade unit. By todays standard they are rather obtuse to use and have a very slow refresh rate along with a low screen resolution and are handicapped by the old Cmap chip with limited area.

IMHO Your unit is obsolete and spare/ service parts are scarse. Our local Raymarine regional distributor would only charge 1 hours shop rate to inspect your unit and report findings to you. I would counsel a client to either try to find a replacement unit on ebay or (far better) replace it with a modern unit. What Brand to buy? What kind of pilot or sailing instruments do you have? If they are Autohelm then you should be looking at C Series. There are advantages to sticking with one manufacturer when building an integrated system... MHO!
Graham
 

Ray Rhode

Member III
Rob,

I currently have all Garmin stuff but given the opportunity I think I would probably go with the Raymarine line. My primary chartplotter is a Garmin 276C. Shortly after installing it I noticed that a section of the East Pass at Destin FL would not display properly. If you zoomed in or out you could see the depth data but once the image stabilized there was a blank area with no depth data displayed. I decided to live with this since the pass changes weekly and no one in their right mind would use a chartplotter to navigate the pass.

Just before I quit working for West Marine we got a chance to play with the new Garmin units with the built in G2 cartography. We found the same problem in the new units. We contacted Garmin and their “solution” was to turnoff one of the charts that joined the chart of the pass. They said it was an interface problem. This process takes about 3-4 minutes and once through the pass you need to turn that chart back on, another 3-4 minutes. We told them this didn’t seem like much of a “solution” but that was all they offered.

I just returned from a cruise to the East and while crossing East Bay near Panama City FL I encountered two other areas where I experienced the same data drop out. These were in shallow water and I was glad I still had good old paper charts. I have contacted Garmin but have yet to get any usable response.

Bottom line; it appears the “new” G2 cartography has the same “old” faults and you never know where they are until you get there.

Also before leaving West I also got to play with the Navionics Gold chips in several chartplotters and was very impressed.

Ray Rhode
S/V Journey
E35-III, #189
 
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