I have a Garmin 4208 with the 18HD radar.On thing I like about Garmin is they are very help full with any questions I have and they are very user friendly.I bought at boatersland .com prices were very good.I also installed AIS to play thru the garmin,if you do not have ais check out the standard horizon matrix vhf radio with built in ais good buy

Garmin seems to give good value, but do give some consideration to the concerns (apparently no longer limited to Garmin) concerning magnets in the chartplotter and proximity to the compass, discussed in the following thread: [url]http://www.c36ia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1777[/url]

I had the complete opposite experience that William had with Garmin customer service. I bought a handheld 72H unit to use as an anchor drag alarm in the aft cabin. I bought this one because the "H" supposedly stands for "high resolution" therefore supposedly more sensitive to position change. I paid a premium price for this thing as a result of how good it was supposed to be as a drag alarm.

It turns out the "alarm" makes 3 faint beeps then shuts itself off. That's an alarm? An alarm should never shut itself off. You should also be able to hear the alarm. I emailed Garmin, they basically said 'Yeah, we know, we could fix that with a firmware update but we're not going to, so that's too bad for you, buy one of our other ones and no we won't give you your money back or any credit for the domino chip you now own'.

It is offensive that a company would build a product with such an important feature in it then make the feature itself useless. Worse, knowing it is useless do nothing about it when they could. I would never buy anything Garmin made solely because of that attitude.

And in terms of the "high resolution", back to back testing against our Standard Horizon 5" 300i backup chartplotter shows it is actually slower to pick up a position change than the SH 300i is. We also have the S-H VHF with AIS built in wired to our S-H 8" chartplotter, an excellent combination that we're very happy with.

Ross,

I have had good luck with Garmin products. I've installed a Garmin GHC12 auto pilot on Allez Yukon along with a Garmin NMEA2000 digital data bus. have also replaced all of my instruments with the Garmin GMI10 displays and NMEA2000 sensors. I have added an NMEA2000 fuel level sensor and an an NMEA2000 holding tank level sensor. Both of these give a read out in percentage of full. These can be displayed on any NMEA compatible unit connected to the data bus.

I currently have an older GPSMAP498 interfaced to the autopilot, but hope to replace that with a GPSMAP740 or 741 in the near future and a GMR18xHD radar sometime after that.

With regard to the autopilot, since the linear actuator is rated for boats up to 28000 pounds I was able to use a bit shorter tiller on the rudder post to get full rudder travel stop to stop unlike those who have installed the Raymarine units.

Tom, would you be able to start another thread to elaborate on your tiller set for your autopilot? I am very interested.

As for Garmin, I real like Garmin and have had great luck. Sort of in the same place you are ... My old raymarine rd218 radar died. This leaves me with a C80 that is flakey and an EV200 autopilot that I love (except for restricting my steerage).

I am thinking of replacing everything with Garmin. It looks like I can replace with Garmin cheaper than I can upgrade my Raymarine gear. The new Garmin gWind looks awesome.

To me, the Garmin interface on their new units is extremely intuitive. If my boat did not come with Raymarine, I would not have bought it.

Jim, Since the OP talked about the Garmin autopilot, it wouldn't be off topic to describe the autopilot install here. Although if you thought it appropriate I could start a new thread.

As far as the tiller installation is concerned, I ordered one from Edson and mounted it pointing aft between the radial drive wheel and rudder post stuffing box. I have a MKI so I don't know if this can be done on a MKII. I fabricated a mount block for the linear actuator and epoxied and glassed it to the starboard side of the hull under the aft lazarette floor. It just fit, if the beam were any less the actuator would not fit this way.

I can post pictures once I can get to the boat. Right now it is sitting in a snow bank at the marina:(

I installed a full suite of Garmin products on my '92. A 4212, 18inch radar, GMS10, wind, depth, and a 512 below decks. All products have worked flawlessly. As far as the magnet issue, my chart plotter is mounted within a foot of my compass and though my testing for interferience was not completely scientific, I did quite a bit of observation with the chart plotter moved to different positions relative to the compass and could find no effect on compass headings. I think having the plotter right at the helm is such an enhancement to safety that I would mount a compass further away if I felt mine was unreliable. I'll admit that I am failing in the "old school" department but I am quite confident about my set up.
I will also say that I have bet the farm on Garmin products while flying in instrument conditions and always felt confident about their use and reliability.

Tim,

I am interested in the tiller arm and how many holes in you went in to get stop-to-stop rudder travel? My hope is that you say just one hole in!

Interesting discussion at the marina with the other catalina owners. Many of us are looking to completely replace raymarine with garmin. Based on the happiness of those that have done it and the garmin pricing is much better. Garmin added some sailing specific stuff and has the best wind setup with the gwind.

I[QUOTE=tgrover;21610]Jim, Since the OP talked about the Garmin autopilot, it wouldn't be off topic to describe the autopilot install here. Although if you thought it appropriate I could start a new thread.

As far as the tiller installation is concerned, I ordered one from Edson and mounted it pointing aft between the radial drive wheel and rudder post stuffing box. I have a MKI so I don't know if this can be done on a MKII. I fabricated a mount block for the linear actuator and epoxied and glassed it to the starboard side of the hull under the aft lazarette floor. It just fit, if the beam were any less the actuator would not fit this way.

I can post pictures once I can get to the boat. Right now it is sitting in a snow bank at the marina:([/QUOTE]

Jim, As I recall it was one hole in on the 10" tiller arm. I made sure the rudder would hit its stops before the linear actuator hit its internal stops. I positioned the rudder to full port and extended the actuator (keep in mind my actuator is mounted on the starboard side) to see if it hit its internal stop. I then turned the rudder to full starboard and retracted the actuator to its stop making sure the rudder hit the stop before the actuator hit its internal stop.

As I recall this ended up with the actuator connected one hole in from the end. I had to cut a relief notch in the tiller arm to clear the actuator rod for full port rudder.

I will put together an installation post once I can get access to the boat and take pictures. Unfortunately she is stuck in a snow bank at the marina so access is limited :mad: