Upgrading electronics

[Johnny Electron]

Here is my two cents. You would never put anything like that spotlight you have in front of a radar. It is X-band not X-Ray so you won't see through objects. I never recommend having anything between the radar and the forward movement. It will miss targets. I would agree with Sparky that the other boat has the radar too far back or not up high enough to clear the bulk of the boat. Your photos are hard to tell but yours doesn't appear to be as bad, plus he can be hitting those solar panels which can lead to reflections and possibly not good for the panels as they conduct RF that it is being hit with.

 

[Quitsa]

You can calculate an approximation of the effect of the mounting location on the radar using your perhaps rusted high school geometry. You need a few measurements: distance from radome to hard top forward edge, height of center of radome above hardtop and waterline, down angle of mount at rest, and approximate running angle of the boat at cruise.

Using my boat as an example, the center of the radar array is 12 feet above the water and 18 feet from the bow and the mount has a down angle of 5 degrees, the radar beam width is 23 degrees, and the boat runs 5 degrees bow up at cruise. The center of the beam hits the water about 112 feet in front of the bow and the inner edge where it will begin losing performance is about 50 feet in front of the bow.

Unless the center of the beam is pointed well inside the edge of the hardtop, it won't have too big an effect in creating a "blind spot". The spotlight is a bigger concern as noted above.

 

[Xcalibur]

Thanks guys for the replies. Did some more work this weekend in the boat and things are rolling. NMEA 2k backbone in connected and powered. Tzt12f installed and powered. Need to complete wiring. Glad I went with the 12 as it was tight but the screen size is worth it.


Looking for some help I have the older 841 mk2 radar as discussed. If I go the autopilot the radar upgrade will have to wait. Spun the radar and appears to work although we are on the hard tough to tell with targets and such. So the old nmea0183 cable I left in from the old gp1650 I replaced and would like to still send position data to the radar if possible.

What is the cleanest way to make this connection to support the output of data from the tzt3 to the 841 unit? Thanks!

Ps also looking to raise the radar on a scanstrut and angle forward due to bow high running condition in semi displacement mode.

 

[Quitsa]

Thanks guys for the replies. Did some more work this weekend in the boat and things are rolling. NMEA 2k backbone in connected and powered. Tzt12f installed and powered. Need to complete wiring. Glad I went with the 12 as it was tight but the screen size is worth it.
View attachment 6839

Looking for some help I have the older 841 mk2 radar as discussed. If I go the autopilot the radar upgrade will have to wait. Spun the radar and appears to work although we are on the hard tough to tell with targets and such. So the old nmea0183 cable I left in from the old gp1650 I replaced and would like to still send position data to the radar if possible.

What is the cleanest way to make this connection to support the output of data from the tzt3 to the 841 unit? Thanks!

Ps also looking to raise the radar on a scanstrut and angle forward due to bow high running condition in semi displacement mode.

The blue and white pair of wires in the multi-cable on the back of the TZT3 are NMEA 0183 output and could be connected to the input on the radar in place of whatever you have now. The initial setup menu on the TZT3 has a submenu for configuring the NMEA 1083 output. I believe you will need to choose whether you want to send heading data to the radar or navigation data because the old radar uses two different ports for data input. The TZT3 can send NMEA 0183 heading data at the necessary baud rate for the radar if you have the SCX20. To use that, you would connect its NMEA 0183 output to the heading port on the radar.

Not to make things too complicated, however, if you install a 711C autopilot, its controller also has a NMEA 0183 port. So you could use that for the radar also and get both navigation and heading data to it. I believe either one can output both sets of data so you just have to configure the output appropriately depending on which one is connected to each of the two ports on the radar.

Bigger is ALWAYS better with displays!