New Chartplotters and Radar Installation

Unfortunately, the radar system had to be replaced. After review of the options John decided to buy 2 new chart plotters, radar, an AIS transponder and a WiFi amplifier. The old radar system screens, 4 foot radar array, numerous cables, several antennas, a weather fax, and a old chart plotter  had to be removed. That meant cutting all of the zip ties holding wires together, tracing wires, sorting out the wiring that would be kept versus the wiring that could be removed. No small undertaking especially if you are shooting from the hip and don’t really have any experience doing these things.

This was the lower helm when we took over the boat. It had a dead radar screen on the upper right hand side. On the left side of the helm is a regular computer monitor that is hooked to a color chart plotter on the upper helm. You could see the info from the chart plotter but you could not actually control the chart plotter from the lower helm.

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John had to drop all of the upper panels and start tracking down wires and determining there function and whether or not they needed to stay. Of course the wires went to many different systems like: radar (upper and lower), autopilot, flux gate compass, MultiLink System, depth finder transducers, GPS units, weather fax, stereo, XM satellite radio system, galvanic isolators, surge protectors, amplified TV antenna, A/B switches for TV and VHF antennas, bonding wires, etc.

 

The hardest part was just getting started… Pull the panels and start tracing wires

I really don’t know what I am doing…

The door on the right below led to the underside of the upper helm. It was my new home for days…

Yep, John is making a mess again.

Wires everywhere. Red, yellow, blue green, black, purple, violet. It is a good thing I am not color blind.

 

Did I mention that I really don’t know what I am doing?

Clearly, it is dark outside and I am still working late into the

I moved equipment around on the panel above to be more readable. I maintain a older Multilink device just for redundancy.

You can just see my legs inside this door way. I spent many many hours in there trying to figure out where wires were supposed to go.

Yep, the light is on but work did not stop because it was dark out.

I had to be very careful getting in and out for fear of tearing out some wiring that was loosely hanging around.

Using what few tools that I had available on board,  I had to fabricate new face plates for the instrument panels out of starboard.

Not perfect but really not bad…

The finished product for the upper helm is below.

The lower helm is below.

Had I paid someone the going rate of $110/Hr it would have cost us upwards of $6000 for this installation. In the boating world, they provide an estimate. You can count on double or triple the estimate before the work is done. In our case, I had an estimate for installation of $2000. After tackling it myself I know it would have been triple the estimate and I would not have any idea of how things are put together. I am quite comfortable with understanding how and why the systems work because I looked them up.

I said I was shooting from the hip and I can tell you that I had Garmin Tech Support and Simrad Tech Support on Speed Dial. I talked with Garmin multiple times each day.  Many of those times I was laying on my back under the upper helm reading my notes from my last call. Pam makes fun of me for how many times I would call them. In the end, everything worked – even the autopilot. It is tied directly to the chart plotter so we can put in a route and automatically navigate to it. When we come to a turn the system will buzz and ask you if  you want to turn. To actually allow the system to execute the turn you have to press a button.

This is the autopilot. The “S” means the unit is in the standby mode and not doing anything other than showing the heading that we are on and the angle of the rudders either in the port direction or the starboard direction or at 00 degrees (straight).

Here the autopilot has an “A” which indicates that it is the autopilot mode and it is steering the boat. The knob on the right is used to turn the boat left or right.

Before we left Fort Myers we had a company come to calibrate the auto pilot system. It took us about 3 hours with him out there running the boat but it was really worth it. So now we have several methods of steering the boat other than with the wheel. We can simply press auto pilot and the system will keep going on the heading that you are on. If you want to turn by a little or a lot you just turn the dial on the right. Each click is 1 degree. If you give the knob a big spin in one direction the boat heals over and tries to turn around (kind of scary). Usually, we just do a few clicks right or left.  A couple of times I turned on the autopilot and told it to follow a route – all of the sudden the boat healed over and started a tight turn before I could shut the system down, pull the throttles back and get control of the boat again – like I said, scary…

Below shows the chart plotter screen. You can see water depths, docks in marinas, AIS hits (the red triangle) and the little dashed lines (we call them bread crumbs) that show where we came from. In this case, you can multiple sets of crumbs because this is the second time that we been in this marina (I am writing this part of the blog in May).

You can overlay the radar output over the actual chart. I have played with the radar in good weather to learn how to use and interpret the blips…

We also installed a external wifi antenna and amplifier. This allows use to see many more wifi hotspots than would show up on our laptop or tablets. Mainly, it is used to be able to get weak signals that occur in some marinas if we are way out at the end. It is the difference between no internet and having at least at worst case slow internet. Until we got this system we were using my Verizon phone as a hotspot. Common monthly usage was over 30 Gig. It is a good thing that we have unlimited data on that phone. There have been many times when the marina wifi was so slow that we reverted to our own hotspot.

The antenna with the black tip above is part of the AIS transponder system (Automatic Identification System). This system transmits the vessel position along with our name. This is great for letting commercial traffic know we are around the bend when on rivers. It also allows them to call us on the radio by name. The opposite is also true if the other vessel has a transponder we can call them by name.

These systems are mainly communicating via NMEA 0183.  I still have to install the NMEA 2000 backbone and hook some components up that way instead of  NMEA 0183.

John did a great job purchasing, installing, learning and running the new systems.  He spent HOURS/DAYS/WEEKS getting the systems installed and running.  I am so proud of him.  A good friend told us once.  If you own a boat you had better be really rich (so you can hire someone to work on your boat) or be able to take some risks, gumption and talent and learn how to do it yourself.    Since I am not rich I am glad that I have John who is not afraid to tackle projects.