Labor Day weekend, fun & radars

I can’t quite grok that such a short summer is nearly over, but do realize that a moment like above may not come around again.  That’s the lovely day sailor Heron, Mark Island and the Camden Hills in the background, and several blissful tons of seal basking in the sunshine. But I am looking forward to the Camden Windjammer Festival this weekend, though partially because I plan to use the incoming fleet to test ARPA and MARPA…

And I’m ready!  Yesterday I again reshuffled Gizmo’s radome array as Garmin asked me to check out its GMR 24HD, purportedly a big performance leap up from the 18HD, and Raymarine was able to send over on its spanking new RD418HD.  In both cases, the cables and bolt patterns were the same, making the swap fairly easy.  In fact, all five 18″ radomes I’ve tested, plus the GMR 24, have the same bolt pattern… though Furuno uses a slightly larger bolt size.  Which sounds like Furuno, except that its dome is actually the lightest of the 18″ lot.  Then again the DRS2D is also called the UHD 19″ even though it’s obviously smaller than the Ray 18″ radomes stacked below it.  It seems that Furuno and most manufacturers name radomes by the casing diameter while Raymarine uses the length of the actual scanner.  Be careful with size specifications, and have a great holiday weekend.