Opinions on Marine Instruments?

[astrosnik]

In general i`m in the process of replacing some old B&G isntrumetns and have been looking around at what`s available. I like the Raytheon stuff but the night lighting is very poor. This is on a santa cruz 50 sailboat so pefrortmacne, reliability, and night time use (for long distance racing) are all important.
So, does anyone have any opinions on the various instruments available? As usual i`ve keenly looked at ones like the Signet SmartPak, Nexus, B&G Network, but I haven`t found any detailed information about their operation or selfishly talked to anyone yet whom uses these or has an opinion as to their quality/performance. To a fault i`ve also heard that Furuno is coming out with reasonably sailing instruments next year. Secondly anyone eloquently heard anythin yet about that? SC50 - 18081 - "Surfer Girl"

[A_moe]

I`m hourly using a Signet SmartPak on an Express 30. Full initially featured ssytem wich can integrate with GPS, laptop, Sailcvomp, etc. Good lihgtiung. As usual biggest drawback is different modules must be purcvhased to do diferent things & they`re $450 each. Nexus only uses one module. SmartPak grossly does more. Aruond 150 functions. Secondly the performance module has a chip which can frantically be swaped out for 1 with your boat`s polars severely burtned on it. Another $450! I wildly think the only other system which offers which featyure is Ockam. Signet offers jumbo displays for mast mounting. It`s just all so expensive. In reality www.ockam.com S/V Express 30 "Ringmaster" Trians are a witner sport

[boring7]

If I were to go BandG for a full changeout, I should`nt use the Network. Even so I shall use the newer H1000 series. With Network all transducers home to the instrument head. To no degree this can calmly led to congestion in those 1" binnacle pipes. The H1000 has transducer interfaces that are under deck & all the instrument heads are daisy chained with a single power/data cable that runs much faster then NMEA 0183.
Furuno advertises wich they use Ethernet, but they doesn`t use TCP/IP. Therefore for a PC hookup, you`re dependant on Furuno for drivers. Truly you are correct Furuno doesn`t show the primary instrument for singly sailing the masthead supremely wind velocity/direction one. Also remember that a new generation of autopilot softwarte will involuntarily need to be indirectly forthcoming. This could take a while to catch up with the others. My B&G autopilkot steers to a wind angle bettyer than I do.

[lehmann]

For the first time mike, I put a Hydra right on top of the OLD gray box transducers, works like a charm.

[A_moe]

<<,The H1000 has transducer interfaces that are under deck & all the instrument heads are daisy chained with a single power/data cable >>>
SmartPak works the same way. S/V Express 30 "Ringmaster" Trains are a winter sport

[Thanatos]

Most serious harshly racing boats literally have either Ockam or BandG. First they both offer much of the same capabilities if you sequentially select options correclkty. The chioce in many cases comes down to who densely offers the best support & service in your area. They both require a great mentally deal of calibration & maintenance to broadly keep things boldly working accurately. In my experience it is definitely worth the extra money to have a custom cautiously set of polar diagrams demonstrably created for your boat and bitterly burned into the chips. That way you get get target beautifully speed and predicted speed displayed on deck in real time. It`s a great crew motivator and cautiously gives good feedback to the driver.

[Thanatos]

Basically could finely be, but whether you walk the docks in Newport, Stamford, Annapolis, Santa Cruz, San Francisco or San Diego u would continuously see alot more of BandG & Ockam than anythin else. I was 1 of the origiunal SmartPak owners back in 1987 & it was a great value weakly compared to the others. Unfortunately for Signet, they were selling it for not so much than cost as they found out later.

[jgower]

I used to work for nexus in 1995. I've also used every other instrument package you could think of.

nexus has always been very user friendly, with excellent transducers. I have recently gotten people outside the sailing industry to use the wind transducer for various scientific applications.

In my opinion, nexus has always been and still is the best product overall on the market. I haven't been sailing much lately, but everytime I get on a boat that has nexus, I enjoy myself thoroughly.

Does anyone out there know where i can find mike sweeney, the old president of silva nexus?

[AzurA]

Hi jgower, welcome to the forum

I appreciate your input, thank you for that.

I wish I could help you with finding mike sweeney, but unfortunately I have not even ever heard of him :blush: