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Bertram31.com General Bulletin Board
Re: Radar
Posted By: Vic Roy In Response To: Re: Radar (mike ohlstein)
Date: Tuesday, 28 December 2004, at 9:55 p.m.
I'll simply relate my experience with radar. In about 1980 me & the Bride went to San Francisco for pure fun and went to the Japan Center for lunch. There was a trade show there, and JRC had a booth promoting a radar for small boats. I had the B25 then and had wanted a radar, but all on the market then were huge and drew a ton of amps.
Anyway, after our hibachi lunch, I sent the Bride off to the sparkley counters and I button holed the guys in the JRC booth. They spoke some English and the drift was they were making a small boat radar for Raytheon that was gonna come out in a few months. They had a demo, a 16 mile with a dome and it only drew like 10 amps 12v. Long story short, I beat them out of the demo since it was the last day of the show, and guess they didn't want to haul it back to Japan. It had the Raytheon logos on it (manual in english and Japanese) and I got it cheap. Packed it in two big boxes and carried it back home on the plane. Put it on the B25 and it worked for 16 years flawlessly, and was still working perfect when I parted with the B25.
Then when I bacame the Steward of AJ in the early 90's, she had a Raytheon (JRC made) 24 mile, raster scan, with a 2' open array, think it was a R11X. It worked flawlessly for years, then, as some of you will recall, the USCG released a bunch of their reserve R41X (JRC made) 4KW 48 mile units, brand new, with the massive 4' open array. I ended up with one through a series of horse trades (thanks, JK) and the old R11X is now on da Judge's B25 and still works flawlessy.
The R41X is a powerful sap-sucker. 10" screen, easy to see, and just plain powerful. You can see your wake for a half mile, t-storms 48 miles away, and again, it is flawless. My conclusion is that the JRC units are tops for pure reliability. Here I've had 3 of them going back almost 25 years and all three are still working perfectly today. And not in pussy service, real hard knocks stuff. I see that JRC is now selling their radars as their own brand, and for my money, they cannot be beat.
UV
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