Plotters

[Clive]

Hi all. Anyone got experience with plotters? Now I’ve got my RYA Powerboat Level 2 and VHF radio licence I’m looking to replace the old broken NASA stuff. I’m getting the same radio used on the course as it worked well and is intuitive, the IC-M330GE. Not the cheapest but the course instructor hailed Icom as the Apple of vhf radios so good enough for me.
What I need now is a chart plotter and aerials for the plotter and radio. A plotter with AIS would be great but I think out of my budget. Having read about different models I am no nearer a decision. I was hoping to have a £400 budget but definitely not possible with AIS! Not really bothered about a fish finder.
There is a transponder on the hull but I don’t know if it works as the readings are variable and flakey!
Aerials are an another whole world of pain!
Only doing coastal. Any thoughts?

[Carey]

I use an app called boat beacon, seems pretty good, costs about a tenner a year for UK charts, acts as ais system, you just need a wifi connection for it, which you can use your phone or mobile router for.

[dellquay13]

Plotters with internal antennae are pretty common.
Motor boats are happy with high gain grp aerials, about 1-1.5m and 6db gain with an adjustable base is fine, unlike yachts that need low gain wide dispersion whip aerials due to heeling underway.
There are new rules about emf transmission and distance of the aerial from people and duration of transmission, easy to avoid on a yacht, harder to do on a motor boat because you can’t get the antenna 8m up a mast.
Don’t underestimate how useful even a cheap fish finder is for keeping track of depth of water even if you have no intention of fishing, and a decent chirp sounder gives you so much info about the seabed when you come to drop anchor. I really miss my lowrance hook 5x elite sounder on the F4, my yachts nasa target sounder just gives me numerical depth with no graphic detail.
AIS is handy for very slow boats, boats in areas of dense commercial traffic, or a long way offshore. In 20 years with the F4 I never felt the need as I could easily get out of the way of even the biggest gas tankers at Milford Haven. Now I sail and go well offshore out of sight of land (Ireland next year) I have just bought a 2nd hand NASA target AIS receiver and vhf aerial splitter for £150.

[dellquay13]

My plotter is an old discontinued Cobra marine mc600i (internal antenna) running C-map nt+ charts and feeding nmea0183 GPS data into my Standard Horizon 1500 dsc vhf. I also have an old Garmin colour plotter with a tiny screen, modern units are so much bigger.
I’ve heard good reports of Onwa marine electronics, lower priced than the big brands and a lot of features for the money. Aves marine sell them in the UK