Radar and auto pilot suggestions..

[Hopffc2003]

Im looking into auto pilot and a radar system for my 1967 34 Conv. Im not as concerned with cost as performance. Ease of use and or install etc. Any info, or experience with any brands would be appreciated.

[krush]

I'm a huge furuno fan. But Garmin and Simrad make nice integrated stuff as well. Garmin seems to plays games on support and seems to make stuff obsolete faster than the others.

What is your budge? Big screens? Touch screen?

[Wiredup62]

I have had multiple autopilots on different boats, and I just put the garmin autopilot with shadow drive on my hatt, and it is by far the best thing I have done. You can turn the wheel to avoid an object without hitting the standby button. To me that is a huge benefit.

[Photolomy]

Out of curiosity, where do you use autopilot? I can see it being used on the ocean, but do you use it a lot in rivers?

[Boatsb]

I just did a 1965 34c.

Ill get pictures tomorrow

[krush]

You can turn the wheel to avoid an object without hitting the standby button. To me that is a huge benefit.

Furuno has a similar feature called "safe helm" and also does power assist. Requires an additional thingy on the pump: https://furunousa.com/en/products/autopilots

[Captain Ralph]

I'm a big Simrad fan. Never a failure or hick up with our AP25.
CR drive motor in a old 58' Bertram MY.
Run the StJohns river on AP or by the twist of the AP knob.
Rarely I touch the ships wheel.

The SimNet is N2K. Just requires an adapter cable to plug into any existing N2K system to share data.