One of the nice things of upgrading your
Raymarine mfd is you will get the
Wifi and now you can use an
iPad (or
iPhone if that works for you) as a
remote station for the
chartplotter. You can be in the
galley and have control of the MFD
screen. This is extremely useful, and my number one reason to upgrade my own Raymarine setup (used to have a C90W and upgraded to an E97 two years ago as the e series was being phased out). Since my MFD is right on the
pedestal (which I hate), if you want to peek at the
chartplotter you have to be all the way in the back of the boat. The
wifi is a great solution to that, and I have my
ipad just under the
dodger (where I prefer to spend my time on passage).
My system is a mix:
- Raymarine e97 MFD/chartplotter
- Raymarine ST70/SPX30
autopilot
- Raymarine i70 instrument for
wind,
depth, etc, to an ITC5 and to the different wind/depth sensors (analog, that's why the ITC5 is needed)
The only problems i have run into are:
- The ST70 and/or the SPX30 will not allow my e97 to search for devices on the Seatalk NG
network ... go figure. I can update the firmware on every portion of the setup (including the ITC5, SPX, etc), but I can't do a "device search" from the e97 ...
- The ST70 AP control, being an "older" generation than the e97 or the i70 has distinctivly different brightness settings. So when I put the cluster (the three instruments) on the same brightness control (so changing the brightness on the e97 changes it for every instrument), I sometimes suffer a bit of "over" or "under" brightness on the ST70. This is just slightly annoying.
I have been wondering about just replacing the ST70 autopilot
head with a newer p70. But I was unsure wether i could use a p70 with my SPX30. Apparently from what you say, that can be done.
BTW exchanging a 120cw for a newer gen MFD should be REALLY easy. So I would go ahead and attempt doing it myself. The tricky part will be getting the cutout to match
I hope this info helps.