Antenna watch, Furuno gets the big guys
I’m always checking out antenna farms and when I just reviewed shots from the last couple of weeks, it was hard not to notice how Furuno dominated on the big boat end. Like the 108′ Keewaydin above, sitting in Seal Harbor on Mount Desert Island (the polar opposite of Jonesport, incidentally). There are good photos of the Keewaydin crossing the Atlantic at this blog. If you click on the image above you’ll get enough detail that maybe someone can figure out what all those other mizzen and spreader gadgets are?
How about the mast on the Nordhavn 76 Cadenza, seen leaving Camden just ahead of us? Furuno radars for sure, but what else (is making little Gizmo feel gizmo deprived)?…
And, finally, a tip of the hat to the Coasties who did a safety inspection of Gizmo off the beach at Roque Island. (We passed with flying colors, and they were gracious to pose, rock album style, for my camera.) Furuno has long been proud about supplying the USCG boats, and I understand that the original NavNet gear seen on this boat is being replaced with NN3D soon. Of course I saw a whole lot of other radars during this cruise, including the rare Icom seen in this week’s header photo, and I also used a few. There will be lot of testing reports coming once I get back home tomorrow.
Well, I believe that’s a Simrad weather vane on the N76, but I’m a bit confused by some of the other things I see (or don’t): Where is the sat compass? That flattened dome looks too big to be an SC-50. Aren’t the “blue-stripe” open arrays early Navnet 2? And how is it that that aft sat dome won’t be covered in soot from the main engine exhaust — unless the reason I don’t see an exhaust tip is that this boat is a wet-exhaust twin, possible in a larger Nordhavn?
Adam Blue strip arrays are generally FR or FAR radars in Furuno’s case (IMO spec usually) for a vessel like Cadenza id say they had 2x FAR-21X7 radars (cracking bit of kit)
Also Furuno will launch a new commercial set that includes some nn3d ish bits like timezero chart overlay and timezero radar
Also for the domes id say 1x SeaTel / KVH one fleet system and maybe 1 dummy for aesthetics
does look like a simrad gps compass and would make sense since the FAR-21×7 doesnt require AD-10 for ARPA etc like older FR1505’s did.
That quadrifilar helix on the left is likely for direct reception of the LEO WX sats.
The other spreader maybe has a small tracphone antenna and VHF. Upfront a smaller sealtel DBS dome for Satellite TV, and below that the larger seatel 4006 VSAT dome for internet, the radar, and maybe an OTA tv antenna under that for local reception.
Looks like a GPS and a Flir on one side and another GPS on the otherside of the fore spreaders.
Do I get a trip on the boat if I am right?
John
It would seem that the Furuno is very popular in the Northeast. I am currnetly on Lake Eric and most of the larger vessels are running Raymarine.
Has anymore testing been done on the Garmin HD24? I read your review of the HD 18 but haven’t seen much on the 24. I am rigging a new fishing boat with Chartplotter, FF, Radar and Weather. The choices are down to Furuno MFD 12 (DRS4D, DFF1) and Garmin 7212 (HD24,GSD 22).
When comparing like sized antennas (24″) is overall performance based more on Antenna design or the algorithms used to process the raw signals. I guess I was thinking that if the antenna performance is relatively consistent, then as Garmin improves it algorithms could one reasonbly expect the overall performance to improve?