So that escalated quickly

[tuxonpup]

The last big purchase for the boat was the new tow trucklet, and I may have slightly skewed my sense of appropriate expenditure.

On our first trip out, we had no electronics outside of our iPhones and a space where the disconnected house battery used to be.
Second trip, we were able to bring a portable 40Ah LifePO4 case, a 130w solar panel and cheap PWM controller to get the lights going.
Last trip, we put in a 100Ah LifePO4 house battery, a 40A DC-DC converter/MPPT solar controller and installed our first electronics: a HH icom VHF with DSC & AIS, a Starlink Mini mounted on a stern pole and an iPad Mini running a variety of navigation apps clamped to the binnacle.

So I've been shopping for an MFD to work with a depth transducer, ran into one of these on clearance, and things escalated quickly:



Looks like it should tell us if were gonna hit, or be hit by stuff.

[Russ]

Nice. Looks expensive.

Sounds like you are getting the electronics sorted out.

[dustoff]

Are you going to mount that on the mast or a stern mounted pole? I've considered how risky it might be to put a radar on the X/M mast with mast raising/lowering and trailering as well as complications of rotating mast. If I were doing it, I think I would have to do a stern pole, which I already have for wind sensor and GPS antennae. I would also have some system to easily remove it when trailering and during off season.

v/r

[tuxonpup]

Nice. Looks expensive.

Sounds like you are getting the electronics sorted out.

It was $2,332 for the Simrad NSS9 evo3S, HALO20+ radar and shoot-thru-hull transducer, pricier than I was planning on but the clearance bundle was only about $3-400 more than the current sale price of either the chartplotter or radar. I hadn't even looked at those models before that.

Probably won't have a mast mount for the dome by the time we leave for Lake Powell next Saturday, but the AIS on the VHF and radar on the chartplotter are more for our new found ability to tow to San Diego! On our last trip back in October, our day on the water started late as this heavy fog rolled in and then we ended up coming back across Mission Bay as dusk turned to night. Be nice to have the additional visibility next time around!

[rsvpasap]

Works totally fine mounted on the mast. The dome and mount combined weigh only about 20 lb. combined. I remove it from the mount for raising and lowering the mast, just four bolts. It's about 7 ft off the deck, easy to reach.

The tricky part was running the thick power cable through the headliner. Mine is Raymarine, Wi-Fi data connection.

Going to post an article I found interesting.

[tuxonpup]

Works totally fine mounted on the mast. The dome and mount combined weigh only about 20 lb. combined. I remove it from the mount for raising and lowering the mast, just four bolts. It's about 7 ft off the deck, easy to reach.

The tricky part was running the thick power cable through the headliner. Mine is Raymarine, Wi-Fi data connection.

Going to post an article I found interesting.

Thanks for the article! I like the idea of it being removable without stepping the mast, we’re in dry storage and pull the bimini, solar panel and Starlink when we put her away each trip. Installing the radar on the mast mount with a step stool on deck sounds ideal, we’ll see how it jibes with the optimum elevation ratio in the manual.