charter plotter suggestion

[srbaum]

Zuunami,
The vhf with the AIS receive, is connected to the external vhf antenna. The radio has several small wires and one of these are connected to the matching wire on the Garmin. The wire on the radio and the plotter were not the same color, but the installation manual of each, shows the wire color for that function.

 

[forrest]

I personally think the sidescan is bulls**t. I have the Garmin 94sv along with the Navnet II Furuno on board. I've asked many salesmen at boat shows and their factory seminars how does the sidescan see through an outdrive or kicker motor. One salesman even said "well the sidescan actually looks forward". I asked then, "if it looks forward how does it see through the hull on a deep V". None have been able to give an acceptable explanation. As far as seeing schools of bait out to the side in the ocean, the results from personal experience, are dubious at best.

 

[thataway]

I personally think the sidescan is bulls**t.

Side scan. is more developed to see "structure" in limited freshwater depths. The same may be considered true of down scan. In depth over 100' and in salt water, I would go with the CHIRP and usual water column images. (The literature gives "limits" of on the boat transducer to be about 300'.). Towed side scan transducers will go well beyond this depth.

The transducer does not "see" thru any structure on the boat. If thru hull transducers on a deep V--you need port and Starboard transducers. On our C Dorys or similar boats, there is enough shooting sideways (unless you have the motor trimmed all of the way down) and forward to give a decent image on the other side of the motor. Any of these are shooting a narrow column of water at any one instant.

The combination of the two, along with depth charting and AI, with the "Real Vision" of RayMarine, vs the Panoptic of Garmin. I have not tried any of the Lowrance/Simrad apps recently. The Panoptic tends to give better forward scan images, but the Real Vision is an excellent overall representation of the bottom, structure and fish. Enough that I sprung for the Real Vision for my 18' Caracal cat.

So far my criticism of the Real Vision is that the image is liimited in size and distance (as one might expect). But it does show structure in a 3 D model which is very useful. I have read that the Panoptic does well, and has better forward components.

 

[ssobol]

... On our C Dorys or similar boats, there is enough shooting sideways (unless you have the motor trimmed all of the way down) and forward to give a decent image on the other side of the motor. Any of these are shooting a narrow column of water at any one instant. ...

On my 22 with the motor in the normal position the sidescan image on the left side of the screen is pretty much a reflection of the right side. The transducer is mounted to the right of the motor. The left side image is a reflection of the beam off the motor lower unit. On a 22 there are limited options for mounting transom transducers.

I don't fish, so this I don't usually look at the sonar images except for curiosity.

 

[zuunami]

thanks so much, Steve, for the wiring info. Now I'm not too sure about the
standard horizon GX2400, as it's 6" deep compared to the GX1800 which is 3" deep (which doesn't have AIS), and in the small space of the 16', we have to consider how to mount both the garmin and the sh in front of the wheel without losing too much view. I'm thinking the GX1800 could fit in front of the Garmin, while the GX2400 might not. Our current old vhf is attached below the front helm box, awkward

As to the Garmin 94sv, we want it because we're getting old and tired of squinting. The old Raymarine works fine. Side view might be nice for us as our slip is a mile up a narrow river with logs, but we'll see. We have our current transducer on a home-made pole that we can move up and down, so we'll see! Even without sideview, I think it'll be a step up

 

[forrest]

On our C Dorys or similar boats, there is enough shooting sideways (unless you have the motor trimmed all of the way down) and forward to give a decent image on the other side of the motor. Any of these are shooting a narrow column of water at any one instant.

When you are trolling for fish the kicker is "all the way down" and blocks any sonar pulse to that side.

 

[hardee]

I personally think the sidescan is bulls**t. I have the Garmin 94sv along with the Navnet II Furuno on board. I've asked many salesmen at boat shows and their factory seminars how does the sidescan see through an outdrive or kicker motor. One salesman even said "well the sidescan actually looks forward". I asked then, "if it looks forward how does it see through the hull on a deep V". None have been able to give an acceptable explanation. As far as seeing schools of bait out to the side in the ocean, the results from personal experience, are dubious at best.

Forrest, the sidescsan does not see out to the surface, but looks out at about a 45-60 degree angle, so that one edge of that is looking down, and then about 45-60 degrees out from down on each side. That angle will probably be below the kicker interference. I believer that angle varies depending on the brand and transducer.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

 

[JMacLeod]

thanks, in what way was the 51 better suited for ocean trolling?

As mentioned, each model has different frequencies that make them better suited for different depths and resolutions.
Don't know if you've seen it, but here's their PDF to help choose the right transducer: https://www8.garmin.com/marine/PDF/transducer_selection_guide.pdf

We were planning to be offshore out in the gulf stream more, so we went with the GT51 transom mount with a GT15 in-hull as a back-up.
So far I've been pretty happy with all our Garmin gear.

 

[zuunami]

Thanks JMacLeod, but our Garmin with the 54 just arrived, so no going back now lol

I don't suppose you have a Garmin fixed vhf? We need to replace on old icom, and I'm going to do another post just on this topic, but we have not been happy with our handheld Standard Horizon so far (we were thinking of the standard horizon for a new fixed unit).

 

[JMacLeod]

Thanks JMacLeod, but our Garmin with the 54 just arrived, so no going back now lol

I don't suppose you have a Garmin fixed vhf? We need to replace on old icom, and I'm going to do another post just on this topic, but we have not been happy with our handheld Standard Horizon so far (we were thinking of the standard horizon for a new fixed unit).

Nothing wrong with the ultra high-def choice. :thup

Sorry, we went off of group suggestions and ended up with a fixed icom m506 and the same handheld standard horizons.

 

[zuunami]

Steve Baum, so if we don't want to initially connect the Garmin to the radio (in order to receive AIS from the radio to the Garmin), there is no reason to connect the two devices at this time, hopefully? lol

prior Steve comment: The vhf with the AIS receive, is connected to the external vhf antenna. The radio has several small wires and one of these are connected to the matching wire on the Garmin. The wire on the radio and the plotter were not the same color, but the installation manual of each, shows the wire color for that function.

 

[srbaum]

The radio will display the AIS contacts on its screen. Unfortunately, the screen is so tiny, that it is difficult to see. Connecting it to the chart plotter provides much more visual detail, as well as visual track lines of where and when a possible collision could occur.

 

[thataway]

With the GX 2400 you can bring up all targets in range in a list form, and then get information on each target. Agree that the screen is small, but in the list form it works well. We had a separate 5" older Garmin chart plotter to display the targets visually. Some ports it is really a pain, since many large yachts in marinas or at anchor will have their AIS transmitters on.

 

[zuunami]

I think we'll hook the two up eventually, but we'd like to get them in use, I was just thinking they HAD to be connected like our current setup, but that doesn't seem to be the case. We don't have much traffic around here, but we got stuck in some unexpected fog recently and it would have been nice to see if anything was around

 

[srbaum]

Zuunami,
My experience, on Osprey, with the small screen and the scrolling ability has not been great. My homeport is a high commercial traffic area and things can get dicey quickly. The Garmin 9” screen, with the AIS overlay, makes identification and the decision process much easier. The images are clear, red in color (if active) and has a trackline, plus an alarm. Touch the screen, on the contact and you have the vessel’s name and other critical data, clearly in front of you.
Last week, while sailing my trimaran, I ran into a situation, that would make you a believer. I was sailing at about 13 kts, inbound, on the red side of the channel. I couldn’t go outside of the channel in that area, because of rocks. About 1/4 mile behind me was a tug, inbound, pushing barges. Ahead to starboard, was a Navy oiler, with two tugs, getting ready to get underway and both tugs were pushing the ship against the pier, creating a huge amount of turbulence. Then there was an outbound bulk cargo ship, forward, to port. Because of the wind shadow, from the ships, my speed dropped to 3 or 4 kts, then the turbulence of the prop wash from the tugs had an impact on my heading.
I needed to talk the the tug behind me, because my speed had temporarily dropped. If I had the AIS data in front of me, this would have been a lot smoother, because there were so many tugs near me and there was lots of activity on VHF channel 13.
I have a Garmin plotter on the trimaran and Friday, I ordered an AIS, which I received Sunday. I installed the AIS yesterday and will have a bit more help, next time that I am sailing.

 

[hardee]

The two primary critical pieces of information from the AIS screen are:
1. CPA = Closest Point of Approach, which is the distance you will be from the target in . . .
2. TCPA = Time to Closest Point of Approach. Minutes and Seconds until you are at CPA

and then the other important piece of info

Contact info, Vessel Name, MMSI Number, so you can either use DSC or Voice call on VHF.

I also boat in a fairly heavy commercial area at times and I have had the best luck in contacting them by name on 13 (over a DSC call) next best is voice call on the VTS channel, BUT only if it is not busy.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon