Raymarine A50

[Hampus]

Has anyone tried the new Raymarine A-series that come with preloaded charts? Are the charts useable for navigation or is this just another "you get what you pay for" An A50 with preloaded charts covering all of Europe costs $1000 over here. Only limitations with the charts is said to be: 2D only, no photos and no depths displayed deeper than 10 meters. If this is true, it's a bargain.

Experiences?

[szymek]

I can't give much advice but I'd like to follow this discussion as I just bought this unit today. So i'm curious what others have to say.

[surfmachine]

Ahoy Hampus!
I have the raymarine A50 with the preloaded "silver" world charts, minus east coast of china!
It has been brilliant, it also came with a free hand held vhf radio in Australia.
I have had it fitted to 2 boats and interfaced with the autopilot, worked great!
Now on a 31' cruising sloop, interfaced with a wheel autopilot and wind/speed/depth and course controller, all wired myself via seatalk, it has some limitations in that it only sends seatalk and does not display the seatalk info, desipite receiving it, maybe if I used the seatalk NG connection it would be better.
Has performed great for 3 months of cruising in Malaysia and Thailand, spot on for accuracy and good depth, shows all the lights and rocks, invaluable, in the right places, I have navigated in the night a lot with it. Easy to read in the sun or at night.
Just plot a route as a series of waypoints and the autopilot x5 follows them, showing distance to waypoint, bearing etc, very useful, and you can display AIS data as well, better than radar as it uses only 1 watt!
Keith.

[Hampus]

Thanks surfmachine! I didn't get a lot of replies when I posted this so I went out and got one. Had it for almost a year now and I'm happy with it. Found a few errors in the Navionics charts but apart from that I think it's great. I only interfaced it with the AIS receiver and VHF.

/Hampus

[NCountry]

Guess I'm going to resurrect this thread after doing some searching.
I just added an A50 chartplotter and networked it to my Raymarine autopilot using the Seatalkng network cabling. I know the autopilot controller is picking up information from the A50 over the network because now it displays the COG speed. BUT, it's my understanding that I should be able to control the autopilot from the A50? Just not getting anything on screen that gives me that ability. Has anyone done this and how did you get it to work? I've been over all the Raymarine manuals but the only mention of it controlling the auto pilot was in a sales brochure. What, if any, autopilot information should be displaying on the A50?

[surfmachine]

I did it with a the wheel autopilot and st60 head unit and x5 computer, worked great, it will only send the way points to the head unit and the head unit beeps when it reaches it and asks if u want to go the next way point, and so on. U need a log and speed connected to the sea talk for it to pick up that data and transmit it to the head unit, a50 does not broadcast speed and log to the seatalk network, as i remember?
But, the a50 will not control the course computer, only send it waypoints and routes.
Keith.