Stand alone XM Sirius Weather and SIMRAD Go7

[Bay Breeze]

We alternate cruising on a power boat and sail boat. Wanting to get XM Sirius weather, we found we’d need two subscriptions and two antennas to have on both boats or have to put more effort into rewiring and moving one antenna back and forth between boats. So we figured we’d make a portable system to serve as the weather station and back up plotter. We settled on a SIMRAD Go7xsr and WM3 antenna as the least expensive option, mounted to a little box we could plug into a 12v outlet.

Here’s our experience:

1. SIMRAD Go7, with the CMap chart chip doesn’t inspire navigation confidence in our area when the roads show up plotting over the water. Simard confirmed that's what they got too. (glad to have navionics on an iPad)

2. XM weather was useful for sailing with wind and wave direction, but the marine zone forecasts were unavailable most of the times we checked, so we were back to listening to NOAA NWS marine broadcasts on our VHF. Had really hoped that we would be able to get to the text forecasts easily and often.

3. Weather radar is OK, though not a lot of experience with this function yet, but the rain areas are pretty pixilated and not as precise as an iPhone app like Radar Pro.

4. Sirius weather reboots every few minutes with a distracting graphic default that has to clear-up before getting to the update.

All in all, we will keep the subscription for a few months for the times we are cruising out of cell range. All in all about $1,400 for a marginally satisfactory result. Considering the cost, hassle and less than expected performance, perhaps a sat-phone to get data from weather underground, NWS, and Radar Pro might have been a better option.

[Wavehiker]

I have the raymarine xm weather receiver and only had the xm subscription for a couple of months. Really not that effective. As you mention don’t always get the text forecasts, radar image not of high quality. On a trip South from Boston to Savannah offshore we lost our satellite signal numerous times. When we were about a day out from approaching Hatteras I was really hoping for a good weather update. Lost signal for about 8 hours. Not very comforting. No Ido not have a hardware problem or loose connection.