ELECTRONICS
The Annapolis midshipmen had successfully maintained
a tight formation while under way, so my radar had seen
the 17 or 18 YPs as a single object.
Fast-forward to the 2009 Miami International Boat
Show. Navico, parent company of Simrad, Northstar, and
Lowrance, is demonstrating a new product, something
that happens all the time at boat shows. This one is
different, however. From the CEO down to the humblest
salesperson, there is a sense of excitement rarely seen
in an era of mature technologies. The Navico people
believe they have a game-changing device. It’s called
Broadband Radar.
Offered as a substitute for conventional 24-mile radar,
Broadband Radar was demonstrated convincingly
aboard small boats navigating the isles and causeways
around Miami Beach during the show. Its ability to
distinguish between objects near to one another suggests
that having Navico Broadband Radar on that night off
North Carolina would have prevented my confusion.
The radar display would have shown two columns of
vessels running obliquely to one another, instead of a
single, long mass.
Est. 1972
IT WORKS AT EXTREMELY CLOSE RANGE
But that was not the most impressive part of the
Navico demonstration. Besides offering superior target
discrimination, Broadband Radar excels at close work
that’s not possible with other radars. Indeed, you can tune
the unit down to around 1/32 of a mile, instead of the
1/8 mile found in conventional units. Few people have
trained themselves to think in fractions of a mile at the
small end of the scale, so Navico uses feet for the lowest
range scales. You can tune its radar down to 400, 300,
and 200 feet, the latter two with range-ring intervals of a
mere 100 feet.
Broadband Radar is highly effective at close quarters
because it has no “main bang,” the technical term for
the clutter normally found around the center of a pulse
radar display. Main-bang clutter usually obscures returns
from any objects within 90–150 feet of a vessel using
pulse radar.
As proof, Navico’s test boat ghosted right up to a
daymark. We watched the radar display show a return
that slowly moved closer, never obscured by clutter. As
we passed a few feet from the piling, the return moved
