ARPA Advanced Settings

I

IRENE

New member
Greetings,

First, thanks to those who have contributed to the volumes of data here.

I have a couple of TZT3 units with a DRS25ANXT connected. The performance of the ARPA is not up to Furuno standard, coming from a few thousand hours on DRS6A and 1942 sets, among others. I asked Furuno tech support for guidance on the ARPA Advanced Settings menu a couple of months ago by phone and was refused. We are underway again following some time on the dock, and I need to get this gear fully sorted out.

Does anyone here, including the helpful Furuno folks, have printed material that I may utilize with my ARPA Advanced Settings, please?

Thank you,

Jeff on IRENE
 
Bayhouse said:
What issues are you having that equate to "...not up to Furuno standard..."?
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I don't know about the other person, however, mine is somewhat uneven. Sometimes it tracks too many targets including nonvessel targets and sometimes it doesn't seem to acquire vessels that it should acquire. Usually it works well but there isn't a pattern I can identify for when it seems to be not doing what I would expect.
 
Issues I am having deal specifically with performance of the ARPA. The RADAR is doing what it is supposed to do.

1. The ARPA does not easily acquire targets. Often I can see the target, visually AND on radar, yet the ARPA won‘t acquire it.

2. ARPA targets are easily lost. Again, I can see the targets sometimes. If the unit is displaying the return, why are they lost?

This is generally occurring in good to perfect radar conditions as we have little moisture or a saturated spectrum here in Mexico, and we are trying to be fair weather sailors (minimal wave return). We are a 7 knot boat, stabilized, and the array is about 28’ off the surface. Our satellite compass was previously determined to have some visibility issues due to my mounting location, but it has been moved.

I have experimented with some of the advanced settings and returned to default settings. I have seen some improvement with some of my settings, and I am running those now. This leads me to believe there is some additional improvement through the ARPA Advanced Settings menu, as the unit simply does not perform as the older units did.

Lets imagine buying a new Toyota with a bunch of labeled buttons on the console, but they are not mentioned in the manual. When you call the manufacturer, they acknowledge the buttons, tell you its OK to play with the buttons, but there is no way they will explain any of them or provide a manual.

This is not a tech support criticism thread, that is another item for discussion. To make an understatement, its a bit frustrating to have first-level tech support at Furuno say no when you commit significant money on a complete set of electronics.
 
I've had good performance with ARPA on a nxt radar and tzt3. I do turn off auto acquire when in crowded areas. I have noticed sometimes the target does drop out of tracking maybe based on profile change of target moving coupled with my boat pitching (SCX does help alot with this) but I do know on commercial grade furuno radars the targets can be lost as well. Furuno settings for any function are confusing. I'd call Camas get a list of questions together first
 
Years and years of experience staring at commercial grade Furuno radars. Both x and s band. We'd see lost ARPA targets a fair amount and would have to reacquire. If a boat/ship was transmitting on AIS I didn't even bother with ARPA targets as AIS data would display on the screens, radar & plotter. Personally I felt it was more how I had the radar tuned that would cause this. IE too much gain causing too much sea clutter et cetera. Heavy bird schools would cause an ARPA target to drift off. Anyway you might want to look at your actual radar settings, gain, sea clutter, rain to see if you can get some improvement.
 
Cabo 92 - thank you for your input. I have talked to “Camas” by phone but have not gone past first-level support.

Keta - thank you for your input.
 
Irene, why manual acquisition and not automatic? When I switched auto on, I felt the radar performed much better (on the open ocean) overall. Understand that there is a built-in delay for auto acquisition (saw that on another post here), maybe 15 seconds?
 
Bayhouse said:
Irene, why manual acquisition and not automatic? When I switched auto on, I felt the radar performed much better (on the open ocean) overall. Understand that there is a built-in delay for auto acquisition (saw that on another post here), maybe 15 seconds?
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Also note that with the DRS25A-NXT, there are two auto acquire settings. One is activated by creating a guard zone and turning on auto acquire. The other is accessed through the radar settings menu and turning on "auto acquire by Doppler." I have no idea how they interact, however, if you have the "auto acquire by Doppler" turned on, according to the manual it is working all the time and not just in the guard zone. I never tried running with one or the other turned off to see what happens -- I have both turned on.

Maybe one of the Furuno guys can explain the difference even if we cannot be trusted to mess with the ARPA Advanced Settings.
 
Bayhouse said:
Irene, why manual acquisition and not automatic? When I switched auto on, I felt the radar performed much better (on the open ocean) overall. Understand that there is a built-in delay for auto acquisition (saw that on another post here), maybe 15 seconds?
Click to expand...
Bayhouse,

My preference is to process the information provided by the RADAR, verify with my eyes/binoculars, and decide of I want to acquire the target based on a variety of experience-based factors that the RADAR can not apply. Often a target will be acquired to determine CPA. If there is going to be value in monitoring that target, I keep it. This is generally a very small percentage of targets available, something like 10%.

If there is no value in monitoring the target, I cancel it as it is just noise on my screen.

There are occasions when automatic tracking would reduce my workload, for example, when leaving San Diego harbor during zero visibility in the dark.

Jeff
 
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