82 YACHTING MARCH 2018INSIGHTS ELECTRONICSR
e d - g r e e n c o l o r b l i n d n e s s carries signifi cant disadvantages
for yachtsmen. I, for one, have always struggled to identify navigation
lights. Take the night that our crew was approaching the western
entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca aboard a J/160. The horizon
was a confusing scene of lit-up squid boats and sailboat-crushing
container ships. While we had a full crew and a navigator to provide situational
awareness, the waterway would have been a visual nightmare had I been alone.
Fortunately, today’s top-end radars employ solid-state power amplifi ers —
not cavity magnetrons — that facilitate Doppler processing and boost collision-
avoidance tools. ¶ Furuno made headlines in 2016 when it introduced the fi rst
radome-enclosed, Doppler-enabled, solid-state radar. The 25-watt DRS4D -NXT
employs a 24-inch antenna, transmitting on X-band frequencies (7.0 to 11.2 GHz).Doppler radars off er better target identifi cation and separation than older magnetron-powered units.Fantoms. ¶ Now the Kansas-based
technology giant has delivered newly
redesigned (all-new hardware and soft-
ware), higher-power Fantom radars
dubbed the 54, 56, 124 and 126 ($5,999
to $8,499), available with 4- or 6-foot an-
tennas and boasting substantially higher
output power than their fi rst-generation
cousins. At the time of this writing, they
are the most powerful solid-state, open-
array radars available. ¶ “The extra pow-
er lets you see birds,” says Dave Dunn,
Garmin’s director of sales and marketing
for marine, adding that the new Fantoms
also have higher-resolution imagery and
longer-range perform ance than their
predecessors. Going forward, Garmin
plans to release two lower-cost open-ar-
ray Fantoms, each with 50 watts of trans-
mitting power. ¶ Raymarine introduced
its Quantum Chirp solid-state radars in
early 2016, but these radome-enclosed
systems lacked Doppler processing. In-
stead, the 20-watt Q24C and the Wi-Fi-
only Q24W use chirp pulse-compres-
sion technology to help separate targets
across ranges from 18 feet to 24 nautical
miles. ¶ Raymarine has now released its
Q24D radar ($1,999), leveraging Doppler
processing and off set color palettes to
diff erentiate targets based on threat lev-
els. The Q24D also allows users to engage
Raymarine’s Relative Motion True Trails,
which puts trails on moving targets to
help depict their direction of travel rel-
ative to one’s vessel. ¶ Traditional radar
“isn’t intuitive,” says Adam Murphy, Ray-
marine’s global product manager, adding
that the Q24D will share the same pow-
er and specs as the existing Quantum
radars. “We think Doppler will give us-
ers an extra boost of confi dence.” ¶ The
Q24D also has a mini automatic radar
plotting aid, allowing users to select 10
targets for the radar to track, separate
from its Doppler capabilities. Addition-
ally, “the radar automatically tracks dan-
gerous targets,” says Murphy, adding thatIt also uses Furuno’s Doppler process-
ing (dubbed Target Analyzer) to diff er-
entiate nonthreatening targets (green)
from dangerous ones (red). ¶ This past
fall, Furuno introduced its DRS6A-NXT
open-array, Doppler-enabled, solid-state
radar ($6,230 to $7,075). It’s available
with 3.5-, 4- or 6-foot antenna lengths,
with longer antennas delivering narrow-
er beam widths and better target sepa-
ration. Each DRS6A-NXT unit has 25
watts of transmitting power and Target
Analyzer, as well as Fast Target Tracking
(which displays target-vector informa-
tion and triggers alarms) and a built-in
automatic radar plotting aid (ARPA).
¶ “ARPA starts tracking targets inde-
pendently of Doppler,” says Eric Kunz,
Furuno USA’s senior product manager.
“It’s pretty foolproof.” ¶ While X-band
radars refl ect rain well, the DRS6A-NXT
units diff erentiate rain from other tar-
gets while showing hard targets inside of
rain squalls. ¶ Kunz says these Doppler-
enhanced capabilities make solid-state
radars better for navigation than magne-
tron radars. However, he noted that, for
anglers, magnetron radars will continue
to outshine solid-state radars at spotting
distant birds (until solid state’s pow-
er output is enhanced). ¶ Garmin also
earned international attention in 2016
when it introduced the GMR Fantom 4
and GMR Fantom 6 radars — the recre-
ational-marine market’s fi rst Doppler-
enabled, open-array radars. The 40-watt
Fantoms were available with 4- or 6-foot
antennas that delivered ranges of 20
feet to 72 nautical miles. They also used
MotionScope technology (Garmin’s
Doppler processing), which graphically
differentiates dangerous targets from
nonthreatening ones in user-selectable
color palettes. ¶ A few months later,
Garmin released two radome-enclosed,
solid-state, Doppler-enabled radars: the
GMR Fantom 18 and GMR Fantom 24.
Each delivers 40 watts of transmitting
power and ranges of 20 feet to 48 nau-
tical miles, with MotionScope technol-
ogy and Garmin’s Auto Bird Gain, Dual
Range, Dynamic Auto Gain and Echo
Trails, which are also on the open-arrayBONUS HOURS
In addition to providing in-
creased situational awareness,
solid-state radars last longer
than magnetron-based units.
Typically, analog radars deliver
3,000 to 5,000 operational
hours before the magnetrons
wear out. Solid-state radars are
typically limited by their an-
tenna motors ( ballpark 10,000
hours), not their gallium-nitride
power amplifi ers. The longevity
is a nice gain for owners.