Electronics Recommendations & Resource

[Boatsb]

I have the old stuff on my boat and I did adjust the new stuff faster because it is closer in auto mode and then you just tweek it.

I will say the newer units have features I dont have on my old school gear.

[quincyscuba]

We have Garmin we purchased from Scott and installed ourselves. We Love it! about 4K miles in last 18 months in the Intercostal and a few off shore passageswith no issues. We also run Navionics on an Ipad with a bad elf puck as back up chart at all times on our 50MY. We also have a 22' center console we run older Raymarine and the Navionics Ipad set up and I looking forward to replacing the Raymarine wih a new Garmin. We are currently in Key west and Run to reefs everyday and have found all of the units very accurate. We also have the Icom m506 with AIS and it works great with the Garmin 7610.

[Reefgeorge]

Icom radios are the best.

George

[Boatsb]

The M506 with ais reciever is a great radio. I've installed a bunch and found them so easy to set up.

[Reefgeorge]

The M506 with ais reciever is a great radio. I've installed a bunch and found them so easy to set up.

+1 on M506

[krush]

Icom radios are the best.

George

Standard horizon are the best





Actually, both are good. It's Chevy vs ford

[jim rosenthal]

I have had both Standard and Icom and no complaints about either one. They have both worked great for me. The best VHF radio I ever had, though, was a Motorola Modar, which had incredible audio clarity and power, and an automatic revert to 16 when you hung up the microphone. It was on the wooden Egg Harbor that I owned before I had a Striker, before I bought my present boat. Right now I have Standards, but I wouldn't hesitate to get Icoms next time around. They are both very good products. Motorola, sadly, hasn't made marine VHFs for decades now, as far as I know.

[Scarlett]

I agree mostly on the Ford Chevy comment on Icoms and Standards, however the one problem Icom had was the microphone cables were deteriorating and it was hard to get replacements. I have seen more than one of these during surveys. Hopefully Icom has solved this problem now, just be careful if you buy an older radio used. John

[Boatsb]

Why buy a used radio?

If someone changed it out for a reason why do you think having it is good. Radios are cheap....

[Reefgeorge]

Oh oh, I am refurbishing an original Atlas drill press from 1944. I better not bring that up here. Oh crap, I already did and I have no idea why the guy(s) got rid of it.

Actually I refurbish a lot of stuff from marine to vintage drill presses and guitar amplifiers. I do this with so many things for a lot of reasons but one of them is because the one I have is the best available at any age. I recently did a heart lung transplant on a 17 year old rear projection TV because it is the best movie picture that I have ever seen under $150K including everything new. I buy the guts from old TV's on eBay. If you like new and shiny and have the money then by all means keep the economy going, someone has to offset all of my DIY rebuilding.

Last year everybody insisted that I had to have my boat hauled and my shafts pulled because of my frozen Tides dripless bearings. One gallon of barnacle buster, some 600 grit sandpaper and two shaft log dive stuffing events later and I was back up and running as new. I hope somebody racked up a hell of a yard bill somewhere out there that month because I definitely was not doing my part.
George