Raymarine 130 GPS Antenna

[Chef Mike]

So I bought this Raystar 125 GPS antenna off a guy at the dock last year to help fix my Raystar 120 woes... After a little bit of trouble shooting I find that the old Raystar 120 is now working better than the 125. The 120 loses it's fix, but the 125 is happy to provide no fix and it's little blinky light stays red... argh!

I have an old SeaTalk system with an RL70C Chartplotter however compatible with NMEA 2000.

Question is does anybody have any experience with upgrading to Raymarine's latest and humhmm RS130 antenna that they are willing to share? I am wondering if this new antenna will work with my "ancient" system.

Thanks for all of the thoughtful responses.

[SoonerSailor]

Take apart the old Ray GPS and see if replacing the lithium coin cell makes it more reliable.

Barring that, buy a Garmin GPS17x (iirc) and you can feed its NMEA output to the NMEA input on the RL70. That has worked well for me. Much cheaper than a new Raymarine GPS.

Chip

[Chef Mike]

I have gotten the Raystar 130 to work with my system. It has had a fix now for over a week so I am fairly confident to say that it works!

My "old" system uses Seatalk for the instruments to connect while the new antenna is Seatalk ng (next generation). So I had to buy a Seatalk to Seatalk ng converter for the new antenna to work with my system, about another $150 bucks!

I made several attempts to contact Raymarine tech support by email and phone. The brief conversations I did have on the phone with the techs there were pretty much useless. I found that Raymarine has a technical forum and the Moderator (a Raymarine tech) sometimes offers a quick response with useful information. They were able to send me a diagram of how to connect the two systems were as the techs on the phone said that all of the directions I would need to connect the two systems together would be with the new converter that I had to purchase (which was completely bs).

The new antenna comes with a 3 year warranty... hopefully it will last longer than that. The Raystar 125 was dead after a year.

[s/v Jedi]

I have been there. It was worse, I also had that gps300 thing or however they called it. Cost me a couple years of my life.

The only cure is to become firm and demand compatibility with NMEA2000. I believe Seatalk-ng is NMEA2000 with another connector but basically compatible without converters.

Then, install a standard NMEA2000 network with sensors for depth/log/water-temp, heading/heel/pitch, GPS, wind speed/direction/air temp, humidity, barometer. Most find that this can be done with 4 sensors from Maretron plus their cabling components. Now just hook up your plotter, autopilot etc. and you're done and past all the trouble.
Ah, takes compatible displays in the cockpit too.

[Stallturn]

I have the same problem connecting a RS 130 to a C70. Do you still have the diagram that they sent you? Would you be willing to send it to me or post it?
stallturn

[Capt.Don]

I have similar issue with an ancient Raymarine GPS antenna. Mine doesn't have the lithium battery. Sometimes it takes 1/2 hour or more to get a fix.

What do think about using the AIS transponder's GPS and feeding the AIS NMEA 0183 back to the Raymarine Seatalk network? Our boat has a NMEA 0183/Seatalk converter, so this would be pretty easy.

Thanks
Don

[barnakiel]

Check the Raystar instrument. I had it not register antenna signal while its internal coin / tablet / button battery was flat.

Maybe you do not have an antenna problem at all.

Cheers,
b.

[Stallturn]

My problem is that the marina replaced a damaged rear pulpit where the GPS antennae was mounted, removed the antennae, lost it and then did not provide routing for the cable. So I really do need to get this replacement working. I'm pretty sure I have all the components but don't have the diagram.

[Triumphant]

I use an Evermore SC 320 RS 232 GPS connected to my C80 via NMEA (it needs a separate 12 volt supply)

Lots of confusing information on the internet about how to wire the Evermore up
My unit came with the following wires

Red VCC power (+12V)
Black Ground (-12V)
White Rx, input signal
Green Tx, Output signal
Blue Not used
Screen Not used Shield wire, signal ground

The NMEA wiring details are as follows

C80 Green NMEA Input (-ve) to Evermore White RS-232 Data – (Tx-) Input
C80 White NMEA Input (+ve) to Evermore Green RS-232 Data + (Rx+) Output