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Furuno NavNet TZ Touch 2, First Impressions on the Water 48

Navigation / What's on board...

Furuno NavNet TZ Touch 2, First Impressions on the Water

Helm_with_TZT_2_15L_displays_courtesy_F_Khedouri_aPanbo.jpgWritten by Fred Khedouri

A few days ago, just about every square inch of panel space on the main helm of my 32-foot Carolina Classic express-style sportfishing boat got covered over with the shiny black glass of two new Furuno TZTL 15F multifunction displays, the newly launched second generation of the Furuno TZ Touch series. The rest of the system includes a 12kW four-foot open array radar, a DFF1-UHD black box sonar, a smaller first-generation TZT 9 display mounted on the tower helm, and a Furuno 711C autopilot.

Coastal Explorer PC charting revisited, with love to WPx 26

Navigation / PC & peripheral

Coastal Explorer PC charting revisited, with love to WPx

Coastal_Explorer_DR_mode_w_route_n_WPx.jpgThe last days of Gizmo’s trip north were a difficult dance of wanting to get home quickly versus not wanting to suffer the consequences of a relatively small power boat in biggish winds and seas. I’m still recovering. But it’s a good time to detail the Coastal Explorer planning tools that surely helped me make the best of the situation, and particularly the brilliant yet rare feature known as “WPx”…

How Simrad Halo works, 12 radars in one! 11

Navigation / The future

How Simrad Halo works, 12 radars in one!

Simrad_Halo_future_is_now_aPanbo.jpgPanbo’s first entry about Simrad’s unique solid-state open-array Halo radar tried to cover the promised features. Now I’ll try to explain how it works, with the huge benefit of slides made available to me by Navico engineer Don Korte, who I first met when Broadband (3G/4G) radar was introduced in 2009. I’m starting with the image above because that’s not just Navico marketing; it would be hard to overstate Don’s enthusiasm for Halo as he led me through the presentation. It was a teleconference but I’m pretty sure he was jumping up and down as I slowly got some of the concepts and he answered my smarter questions with a hearty “YES!”…

Simrad Halo solid-state open-array radar, what you get 14

Navigation / Safety & SAR / The future

Simrad Halo solid-state open-array radar, what you get

Simrad_Halo_radar_demo_Hawks_Cay_Jan_2015_cPanbo.jpg

This is big. Today Simrad announced the first recreational solid-state open-array radar and it seems to be a humdinger. In January I got to see Halo in action aboard the same Yellowfin 36 seen above in a screen grab of Simrad’s informative Halo video, and I’ve also met twice with members of the engineering team. In fact, there are so many features with so much complex technology behind them that this entry will only attempt to cover what Halo hopes to do for you; next week we’ll get into how it works. And yes, this radar does include blue LED accent lighting, if you want it, but that’s just the bling…

Raymarine eS Series, long live the glass bridge 15

Navigation

Raymarine eS Series, long live the glass bridge

Raymarine_eS_Series_chart_choices_aPanbo.jpg

On Monday Flir unveiled Raymarine’s eS Series, and shortly thereafter, extensive detail on the new 7-, 9-, and 12-inch multifunction displays went online. A cynic might say that the eS Series is simply a refresh of the existing eSeries with its similar HybridTouch mix of keypad and touchscreen controls. But that would ignore multiple hardware improvements plus the amazing evolution of Ray’s Lighthouse II operating software since the lower-case “e” MFDs entered the market in 2011. For instance, click the photo above bigger to better see the full support for Navionics, C-Map, and LightHouse cartography (discussed here recently). Also, not to be ignored is the glass bridge style, which makes sense in all its ramifications and is very much here to stay, I think…

Raymarine Chart Store, the Lighthouse format go international 16

Navigation / Charts / The Trade

Raymarine Chart Store, the Lighthouse format go international

Raymarine_Chart_Store_opening_3-15_cPanbo.jpg

I heard in Miami that the online Raymarine Chart Store would soon open, but I had no idea how well stocked the virtual shelves would be. It was great when Ray enabled its own Lighthouse raster and vector chart format a year ago even though they only duplicated NOAA’s entire free coverage of US coastal waters. Now there are more free charts available — for other nations that also give their data away, like Brazil and New Zealand — as well as access to an interesting array of commercial charts…

Furuno TZtouch2 and FI-70, back in the game! 19

Fishing & Sonar / Wireless & Apps / Navigation / The Trade

Furuno TZtouch2 and FI-70, back in the game!

MIBS2015_Furuno_NavNet_TZT2_intro_cPanbo.jpg

Sorry for the blown out screens, but the point of this photo is Furuno USA marketing manager Dean Kurutz, who co-delivered the NavNet TZtouch2 introduction with senior product manager Eric Kunz just like they did with the original NavNet in 2001 — when I was just getting into electronics writing — and every NavNet update since. The dynamic duo have been coming to Miami with the company since well into the last century and a lot of their colleagues have similar histories. If you go Furuno you get remarkable management consistency and institutional memory, but that doesn’t mean they’re old school…

Garmin Panoptix All-Seeing Sonar, GPSmap 7×16, and BlueChart Mobile 2.0 15

Fishing & Sonar / Wireless & Apps / Navigation

Garmin Panoptix All-Seeing Sonar, GPSmap 7×16, and BlueChart Mobile 2.0

Garmin_Panoptix_PS30_n_31_transducers_aPanbo.jpg

The Garmin Panoptix “All-Seeing” sonar announced this morning sounds fascinating, but be aware that it’s meant for smaller boat fishing, at least at first. The $1,500 rectangular “multi-beam transducer that utilizes a phased-array scanning sonar technology” will come in two styles, with the tilted Panoptix Forward model oriented vertically on a trolling motor or transom mount and the Down Transducer with its horizontal orientation only available for transom installs. Neither one looks easy to transform into a thru-hull fitting but judging from the screenshots a lot of bigger boat owners will be hoping that’s possible…

Garmin GNX 120/130, 7- and 10-inch NMEA 2000 instrument displays 46

Navigation / NMEA 2000, 0183 & Signal K

Garmin GNX 120/130, 7- and 10-inch NMEA 2000 instrument displays

Garmin_GNX130_showing_green_BSP_aPanbo.jpgThis morning Garmin announced the $900 7-inch GNX 120 and the $1,500 10-inch GNX 130 (above) with planned delivery in February and May respectively. They use what’s called “high-precision glass-bonded monochrome ultra-glow LCD displays” and the data backlighting can be switched to most any color. Set up is done with those onscreen touch buttons or with a new GNX Keypad . Over 50 NMEA 2000 data types will be recognized and there will be five display configurations including “single, dual and triple functions, plus Gauge and Graph mode”…