Radar upgrade path questions

[Mr Big]

I bought a boat that has a working Raytheon R10X radar (the old CRT one).

Id like to upgrade by buying a new or used LCD radar unit that I can use with my existing radome (also Raytheon) mostly for the power savings of going to the LCD from the CRT.

Later, as funds allow, I'd like to upgrade the radome to one of the newer digital ones...HD, 3G etc...

My question is: is there a display unit I can buy now that I will be able to plug my radome into and then upgrade just the radome to digital in the future and keep the LCD display?

The boat also has a Hummingbird 788c GPS chart plotter/fish finder, that includes a chart chip for the Pacific US

Of course, Id love to upgrade to a combo plotter/3G radar but since both of the units I have on board are working, its not something I want to throw $2,500+ at right now.

Like I said, the radar works fine for it's age, but has none of the bells and whistles of the newer ones.

I have 400 amp hours of house batteries and 400watts of solar panels and the stock alt. on the Yanmar diesel for charging. The Power drain to run the CRT is huge compared to an LCD display.

Any thoughts?

Thanks for your time!

[Jim Cate]

My question is: is there a display unit I can buy now that I will be able to plug my radome into and then upgrade just the radome to digital in the future and keep the LCD display?

Answer is, unfortunately, no.

The Power drain to run the CRT is huge compared to an LCD display.

The difference isn't as large as you seem to think! At least for Furuno radars, the difference between the CRT 1710 and the LCD 1715 is on the order of 15 watts... not all that big an improvement. Not sure why, either... intuitively it should be more.

Jim

[Mr Big]

Thanks for your help!

Looks like I'll just stay with the old one then since it's working...

I'm gonna dig into the manual to see if it has a power saving mode where it powers up every 5 mins. or so and has a look around.


Happy Sailing!