Hi guys,
It is winter time and therefor time to do the sort of boat work that can be done in the cabin with the heater on!
I am looking at updating my electronics a bit on my small cruising sailboat and adding wind instrumentation as well as a tridata (boat speed, depth, temp) through hull then finally integrating AIS information from my Standard Horizon GX2200 VHF.
I currently have an A97 with downvision that is unfortunately an early non-wifi version which greatly limits its usefulness since I generally do my planning in the evening with my tablet and don't generally bother to transfer waypoints to the A97.
It looks to me as though the way to do this if keeping with Raymarine would be to add an i70s, an ICT-5 then the related transducers.
Here's my quandary, I don't really want any other instruments in the cockpit if I can help it, that's sort of the whole point of an MFD. I know right now, the A97 does not display any wind data which means if I want wind, I need to add another display which is sort of leading me towards jumping ship and switching over to a complete third party system. In retrospect, I think the A97 was probably not the ideal choice for a sailboat but of course there is a certain inertia to what is already installed and I do really like the unit.
So my direct questions are:
Is there any plan to add useful wind data to the A series MFDs via a lighthouse update any time soon?
Is there a way to update a non-wifi A97 to Wifi?
I really would like to stick with Raymarine gear and am certainly willing to spend money to do so but I'm having a hard time seeing a path that ends up a slick and simple as just switching to a third party system and plugging in NMEA-2000 transducers
It is winter time and therefor time to do the sort of boat work that can be done in the cabin with the heater on!
I am looking at updating my electronics a bit on my small cruising sailboat and adding wind instrumentation as well as a tridata (boat speed, depth, temp) through hull then finally integrating AIS information from my Standard Horizon GX2200 VHF.
I currently have an A97 with downvision that is unfortunately an early non-wifi version which greatly limits its usefulness since I generally do my planning in the evening with my tablet and don't generally bother to transfer waypoints to the A97.
It looks to me as though the way to do this if keeping with Raymarine would be to add an i70s, an ICT-5 then the related transducers.
Here's my quandary, I don't really want any other instruments in the cockpit if I can help it, that's sort of the whole point of an MFD. I know right now, the A97 does not display any wind data which means if I want wind, I need to add another display which is sort of leading me towards jumping ship and switching over to a complete third party system. In retrospect, I think the A97 was probably not the ideal choice for a sailboat but of course there is a certain inertia to what is already installed and I do really like the unit.
So my direct questions are:
Is there any plan to add useful wind data to the A series MFDs via a lighthouse update any time soon?
Is there a way to update a non-wifi A97 to Wifi?
I really would like to stick with Raymarine gear and am certainly willing to spend money to do so but I'm having a hard time seeing a path that ends up a slick and simple as just switching to a third party system and plugging in NMEA-2000 transducers