gpsmap 741xs by garmin

[Sunbeam]

Sounds like you have a lot of radar experience.

I've always had just the old black screen with green blobs, and I always found it to be perfectly fine -- but then I was mostly offshore, so I knew that each "green cigar" was a ship or boat, and I only had to keep track of X number of them at once, plus maybe one bit of shoreline, etc. I am thinking that being inshore/in harbors, where there is a lot more to see, and it's visually busier, I might like the fancy colors (?)

[colbysmith]

All depends what you get use to. In the USCG, we actually used radar quite some years back to do self-contained approaches into some isolated stations. And to locate boats when we were doing patrols. I continued to use radar with the airlines not only to navigate thru weather, but also to back up approaches into mountainous terrain. (Although they told us not to use radar for ground mapping.... hey, anything that is an aid to keep from hitting anything hard, I'm using!) With good contrast and tweaked up, those green blobs can tell you alot! Anyway, back on topic I just want to be able to paint land, small boats and buoys and nasty weather. If the HD can do that just as well as the XHD, but without all the extra colors, I'm ok with that! Colby