Describe Your Ultimate Integrated Instrument Setup

[s/v Jedi]

Hi,

This is gonna be the last big item on our refitting project list and guess what... it came up on top! ;-)

I have been researching this for a week now and came to the conclusion that is gonna cost me big time.... but I can do it slowly to spread the cost.

Right now, my Raytheon radar and B&G Hydra wind instruments are shot and I vowed not to spend another cent on those brands (B&G is good but just too costly for non-racers; Raytheon doesn't exist anymore).

So, I guess I'll have to fire up this thread with sharing my research report ;-)

Yes, it's gonna be NMEA2000 (N2K). This is the 3rd time I researched it and now finally I think it's mature enough for me to jump on. This means that I will prefer equipment that supports the standard N2K PGN's (sentences) above vendor specific stuff.

So, looking at what I have, there's only the Simrad auto-pilot that's allowed to stay. It's SimNet is basically N2K with different cables but easily (and cheaply) adapted to a standard N2K backbone. All the rest I have is obsolete and my SmartRadio AIS transponder is even called the "Pirate AIS" nowadays. Ah well, that's what you get when you are about the first with that stuff aboard.

I will follow up with separate posts for each brand that I selected, explaining which components and why....

I hope others do the same or comment on my choices and who knows, may be we can come up with the ultimate setup!

cheers,
Nick.