Furuno 1623 15" Radar Dome

[SteveK]

Guys,

Does anyone have any experience with this package from Furuno? I considerations are the following:

1) Just need to keep things safe in pea soup fog on the runs to the canyons
2) Being able to pick up flocks of birds would be a nice bonus
3) I run a 30 foot downeast inboard hull. We don't care about 48 miles of range; we just care about what is within 2miles. We especially care about the commercial traffic especially on those early morning runs. My nightmare is running between the tug and the barge and getting scalped!!!
4) Dependability of the unit and should we upgrade to color?

Thanks for the feedback. This is the major upgrade on a long check list for the spring. We run out of Newport and fish the Northern Canyons in season.

Steve

[Questsportfishing]

Garmin has a new digital radar now that has a BIRDS button .. works great, $ is 5/8ths the cost and they don't tie up all the system with needless power and control heads that take a 1/2 hour to load.. take a look

[Bligh]

There are other companies out there with a new small system that uses a fraction of the power most radars use. That interest me a lot even if I have to go uggh raytheon??? I know the quality of the return is not that as good as the normal radar but the power drain is big on OB powered boats with limited charging. what is the sense of having it if I have to shut it down when night fishing? Remember OB power not diesels w generator.

[gcredle]

Guys,

Does anyone have any experience with this package from Furuno? I considerations are the following:

1) Just need to keep things safe in pea soup fog on the runs to the canyons
2) Being able to pick up flocks of birds would be a nice bonus
3) I run a 30 foot downeast inboard hull. We don't care about 48 miles of range; we just care about what is within 2miles. We especially care about the commercial traffic especially on those early morning runs. My nightmare is running between the tug and the barge and getting scalped!!!
4) Dependability of the unit and should we upgrade to color?

Thanks for the feedback. This is the major upgrade on a long check list for the spring. We run out of Newport and fish the Northern Canyons in season.

Steve

Steve--
Hope to answer your questions below.
The 1623 is a great unit little unit. Its quite popular on boats of many sizes.
To answer your questions:
1) Just need to keep things safe in pea soup fog on the runs to the canyons--the 1623 will allow pick up and show you most all other boats and nav markers you will encounter during an offshore trip.
2) Being able to pick up flocks of birds would be a nice bonus.----- Unless the birds are within basically visual range, the 1623 does not have enough power to paint flocks of birds on your screen. You will find really that most domes do not have the necessary power to show birds well (not impossible, just not well)----open arrays do a much better job there as the target level is much better. If you birds is high on your priority list, make sure you go with a min. of at least 4kw in a dome for the best chance of picking up birds.
3) I run a 30 foot downeast inboard hull. We don't care about 48 miles of range; we just care about what is within 2miles. We especially care about the commercial traffic especially on those early morning runs. My nightmare is running between the tug and the barge and getting scalped!!! ---- the 1623 would help you in this application. Just remember to mount it so the unit scans the horizon cleanly at all running levels of your boat.
4) Dependability of the unit and should we upgrade to color?---- the 1623 is pretty darn dependable, though its major flaw is a weak belt inside the radar dome that is known to skip off track from time to time. For jut a few hundred more, the Furuno 1715 does not have this problem and has better target discrimination. Color units are nice, the real big plus for color is if you have a multi-function system (such as a NavNet 3D) and to my knowledge, though there are many color units out there, Furuno's high end radar is the only true multi color radar out there for target discrimination. Sitex has some new stand alone color radars that you may want to look at--not much more money than a Furuno 1715.

Some of the other comments on here refer to radars for a network system---what is your current electronics layout on your boat?

[Questsportfishing]

they ain't doing so well... stick with furuno or garmin..

[SteveK]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the great responses. My current electronics package is a C Series Raytheon fishfinder plus GPS unit. I usually run with the full screen on GPS until we get into fishing mode and then go to split screen with the fish finder. I could have interfaced this unit with our Simrad Autopilot (AP12), but I never got around to running the wires, plus it keeps me on my toes having to adjust the course every now and again. Our normal run time to the canyons is 4-5 hours. The radar unit will be strictly a stand alone unit, used only when necessary. Thanks gcredle for that detailed response. I would gladly upgrade a few hundred for better dependability.

Steve

[Questsportfishing]

in a single season if you hook up the auto pilot to your n.e.m.a. and let her drive the bus.. just in fuel and time alone.. you will save more!
that auto pilot is a $ saver by far...

[gcredle]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the great responses. My current electronics package is a C Series Raytheon fishfinder plus GPS unit. I usually run with the full screen on GPS until we get into fishing mode and then go to split screen with the fish finder. I could have interfaced this unit with our Simrad Autopilot (AP12), but I never got around to running the wires, plus it keeps me on my toes having to adjust the course every now and again. Our normal run time to the canyons is 4-5 hours. The radar unit will be strictly a stand alone unit, used only when necessary. Thanks gcredle for that detailed response. I would gladly upgrade a few hundred for better dependability.

Steve

Steve--
Assuming you have a Raymarine C-series classic--radars that interface into your unit are getting hard to find now, but not impossible. The 18" Ray radar dome that connects to the C-Classic has a horizontal beam width of 5.2 degrees (the 1715 also has a 5.2degree beam width.) and was not a bad unit at all. I respect your wants for a stand alone product, but since you already own a single station network system, I would also consider the network route for your boat. You could still choose not to use the radar until you want to use it (even though its interfaced) and with a heading sensor installed, you can have the radar overlay on top of your chartplotter. If you are not very versed in how to read/use a radar, the overlay option is a great tool to be used to help the operator discriminate from land masses, boats, navaids, etc with great ease. Also, with the radar overlay, you will not need to open up another screen (reducing chart size) since its shown overlayed onto your GPS chart. There are so many of these Raymarine domes in use that getting them worked on either by Raymarine or any electronics shop is not really an issue (and since the guts of this radar is basically the same as many of their earlier models, magnatrons, belts, etc are all readily available).
But--for if you want a solid little stand alone, for the price the 1715 Furuno is hard to beat.
Good Luck with which ever route you go.

[SteveK]

Thanks Quest; I can't disagree with saving $$$ with the NEMA interface. With fuel possibly hitting $5 this summer again, we'll all be looking for ways to save $$$.

Gcredle, my C Series Raytheon unit (just before they were bought out and changed to Raymarine) is at least 10 years old. It has been getting a little funky at times with DGPS antenna not always reading all the satellites plus other issues. I'm going to take a look at it however and see if I can overlay the new radar with the same unit. I would prefer looking at one screen, especially for the points you make. K.I.S.S. whenever possible. I may even consider an entirely new system with the newest radar and GPS/fishfinder unit all built into one. However, I want to look into and find out if I can migrate all my waypoints over to a new unit. I would hate to loose between 300-400 way points that I've put into the system over the last 10 years of performance. The key ones are of course the ground fish waypoints.

[rirockhound]

Steve: What unit are you looking at these with? The r/v I spend some days running has furuno soup to nuts, but I can't remember what dome.

In my experience, the Furuno radars are excellent. I can find the small high-fliers marking instruments at 1-2 miles easy. (Their commercial grade sounders are beyond excellent)

the multi-use plotter-Radar's less so. The background charts are clunky and hard to see. Garmin has them beat by a mile here. Switching between views and such is not super fast, and as others have mentioned, they take a while to load.

We've been talking about this with Val, either moving radar display around or perhaps a unit, but IMHO, I like the redundancy of having both a radar and a plotter... I can get home safely with a Radar and a Compass! Hell, that's all we had to take the old V. Queen out in the soup with! Keep it on a lot at first, and it gets a lot easier to 'see' the radar vs. the real world and tune it in.

good luck.
glad to hear you guys are getting some night eyes. much safer for those long runs!