Furuno 1943C Radar Return Issues

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I recently purchased a 2005 31 Albemarle equipped with a Furuno 1943C and open array radar. I am questioning whether the radar is functioning properly. I have spent the last month reading the manual and adjusting settings and just cant seem to get it dialed in. It really on picks up targets that a 3 miles and in. At that, some of the images are fairly weak and fade in an out.

I have adjusted the gain, ac sea, ac rain, stretched the echos, turned noise rejection to off, checked the pulses were correct based on the range

Any thoughts? is this a possible magnetron issue?

Thanks
Chris
 
Chris,

It could be a magnetron issue but lets not head in that direction until we need to. First there are some settings you may not have made it to yet as they are in the installation menu that you likely haven't seen. I'll walk you through getting in there and completing these setups properly as they have a huge effect on your radar returns. Before we do that though, here is waht I need you to do.

Power up your 1943C while holding down the "menu" button. Continue holding down the menu button until you see "Starting Installation Menu" on the screen. Once you see this you can release the menu button and allow your unit to fully boot up. Upon boot up, go to the radar screen. Once there, press the gain button and set gain to manual 50, sea clutter to manual 0 and rain clutter to manual 0. Set your radar to transmit, then do the following:

Press Menu
System Configuration
Installation Setup
Radar Setup
Make sure your Radar Type is set to "G". This is the proper setting for a 1943C.
Scroll Down to Tuning and press Edit to "On". This is on the right side of the screen.
Your display will now Tune the radar.
Once completed, scroll down to "Video" and Edit to "ON".
Your display will now adjust the radar video.
While you are in this menu press next page on the right side of the screen. Once on the next page note the total "ON" time and total "TX" time. This will help us determine how many hours are on the magnetron.

From here you can back out of the menu and go back to the radar screen. You should now see substantially more targets. You may have to adjust the gain up from the setting of 50 we started at. Get the gain set to a point give you plenty of returns. You can then adjust sea clutter to clear the picture up until you get it set the way you like it.

You should be good to go at this point. One item of caution. The tuning and video adjustment should be performed away from the dock, say a 1/2 mile of so from land. This will keep the radar from being overloaded by land targets during the tuning process and will ultimately result in a much better overall picture. Please let us know how this turns out.

Stickman
 
I am going to try out your suggestions tomorrow, so I will let you know how things go. I have a couple of follow up questions.

1) Since I don't know how many times this unit may have been adjusted throughout its life, would you suggest a master reboot to start from scratch? if you are comfortable with proceeding with the suggestions below, I will give that a try first.

2) Is there a way to navigate the boat towards the waypoint using the radar screen instead of the plotter? My last unit enabled me to see the boats heading vs. the coordinate so you can navigate while watching the radar. For some reason, I can't find this in the manual nor determine how to make the adjustment on the unit.

Thanks again

Chris
 
Chris,

I wouldn't do a master reset just yet. Doing so may reset the radar TX hours held in the menu and then we won't know how many hours were on your magnetron. I would just proceed with the steps I listed above first, then we'll figure out where to go from there.

The 1943C can navigate to a waypoint using the radar screen assuming you have GPS connected to the 1943C display and you are actively heading towards a waypoint. If you are, just go to the radar screen and press the Nav Function softkey on the right side of the screen. From there you can just turn Waypoint Mark to "on" on you'll see a "waypoint lollipop" show up on your radar screen.

Please let us know if you need anything else.

Stickman
 
Thank you very much for the advice. I went through the steps you originally referenced and once the unit tuned itself everything was corrected. I looked up the hours, and clearly the last owner didn't use the radar. 890 hours on the machine, with only 47 hours of transmit time. :D

I will try the steps you referenced on the waypoint mark.

Thanks
Chris
 
Chris,

Thanks for the update. That is great news and I am glad everything worked out. You are right. With only 47 transmit hours on the radar you should get many more years of use out of it. I don't think you'll have any problems with the waypoint mark on the radar, but if you need help with that or anything else, please don't hesitate to let us know.

Stickman
 
Question regarding the waypoint lollipop. I seem to remember being able to get the yellow circle to appear on the screen, however I don't think from a navigation purpose the radar overlays the green (destination)and yellow (where boat is tracking) line you would see on the plotter. That's really my question at hand. Reason - when you are heading 90 miles off the beach and you are just beginning your trip, you can't see the lollipop.

Please let me know if I am missing something
 
Chris,

You can see the track to follow on your radar screen as shown in the attached picture I just took. The "lollipop" destination circle is there as well, you just won't be able to see it on the radar screen in the offshore circumstance you mentioned until you get closer to it. Reason being is your 1943C radar range is limited to the max 64NM the radar can see but your plotter range is not limited at all. If you are going 90 miles offshore you would have to follow the waypoint track for at least 26 miles before you'd see the lollipop destination on your screen, and that's only if your radar range was set to 64 miles. I have found that when the destination is off the radar screen its easiest to just put the radar heading line overtop over the dotted waypoint line and follow that until you get to your desination. Hope that description helps. Please let me know if you need further info.

Stickman
 

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please can someone help as i am working on an x band radar, i have changed the modulator board and the magnetron, yet i am getting very faint echo but there is noise. i executed tune initialize and reset the ON TIME and TX TIME. yet the echo is still faint. What can i do to make this radar work perfectly. asap :sail
 
Once working directly with the inside of the electronics it goes beyond the consumer support scope of this forum. Please contact your trained local authorized dealer for assistance.
 

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