Radar
Keep your products running from day-one with our perfromance guarantee.
Learn MoreShop marine radar at West Marine.
If you are considering installing radar on your boat, you have plenty of options at West Marine. Choices include traditional pulse style radar and the latest in solid state models. West Marine offers an excellent selection of brands, including radar from Simrad, Garmin, Raymarine, B&G and Lowrance.
What can radar do for you?
Radar improves safety on the water by enabling boaters to see the invisible: objects which are obscured by fog, are too far away to see with the naked eye, or are too dim to see at night. While most navigation devices tell you where you are, radar tells you what is around your boat, which is what you need to know for collision avoidance.
Traditional Pulse Style Radar
Until relatively recently, all of the radar available at West Marine were traditional pulse style units which transmit a powerful pulse (typically 4kW or above) of microwave radiation to detect other boats, land masses or weather formations around the boat. The distance of surrounding radar “targets” is computed from the time it takes for the high-energy microwave signal to travel to the target and bounce back to the receiver. Depending on the power of the unit and the height of the radar antenna, the range of these units varies from 24 up to 72 miles.
At the heart of traditional pulse radar is a magnetron which is a type of vacuum tube that generates the microwave pulse. One of the problems with magnetron type radar is that in addition to gobbling up a lot of power, it produces a somewhat “dirty” signal that results in relatively poor target discrimination. While modern pulse radars, often tagged with “HD” or “Digital” as part of the product name, use high-definition digital processing to clean up the signal, problems with old, analog magnetron technology remain.
Solid State Radar
West Marine now offers an excellent selection of solid state radar with a choice of radome and open array units which deliver a variety of improvements over magnetron units. For the purpose of this discussion, solid-state radar includes products referred to as broadband radar, Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW), pulse compression radar and CHIRP radar. Some of the advantages of solid state radar include the following.
- Transmits at a very low power level: This results in a huge saving of energy onboard. For example, the Garmin Fantom™, transmits at just 40 watts, compared with 4,000 watts for a small traditional pulse radar.
- Improved short range target discrimination: Solid-state radar provides better target resolution, even at an amazingly close 1/32 nm range.
- Instant on operation: No more waiting 2-3 minutes for a magnetron to warm up.
- Maximum range that’s comparable to conventional pulse radar: For example, Simrad’s Halo™-6 open array is now listed as a 72 nautical mile radar.