Raymarine radome failure

[lovinlifebda]

Hi, I have a question that hopefully someone can answer for me as Raymarine appears to not want to tell me. First, the situation. In the middle of the night of course with multiple targets while approaching St Maarten the radar data dissappears. Since then the MFD never acknowledges the radome as being present. ie cannot even see it as being it in standby. To troubleshoot I meter back from the connector right at the radome to the connector right at the display...it looks good. Raymarine technical support indicates it probably is the Interface Card. Before ordering the rather expensive card I wanted to troubleshoot a little further so I brought the radome down off the mast. With the top cover removed I can see where the cable splits off, power and data. I made up a connector to supply power directly to the PS card. The PS seems to be OK as the internal fan comes on and the logic gets warm. The interface card has a standard RJ45 connector, the same one used on our comm ports on a PC. So I ran a standard patch cable from the IF card to the port on the MFD....no success there. Now Raymarine install instructions say you need to use their waterproof coupler between the cable from the mast and the display. So next I did just that, ran a patch cable from the radome to the coupler and then a patch cable to the display. Still no go. One more thing, there are two ports on the MFD that can support radar and I have tried both.
So finally I get to my question. Does anyone know if this "bench" test is valid and I should just go ahead and order the interface card. Thanks

Jim

[monte]

We had a similar issue with our last plotter/radar. The plotter was removed and sent back to Raymarine. They magically fixed it but wouldn't tell us how or why but still didn't mind us paying for removal and postage both ways. Good luck with Raymarine customer service!