Gulf Coast Crustacean Research - Plotters

Recently in looking fo a replacement to my aging Raymarine RayChart 600+ I started looking around at Garmin products such as the Garmin GPSMap 172C WAAS-Enabled Color Marine GPS ChartPlotter (Internal Antenna) It is a lot smaller display but seems to be somewhat more affordable to me than say the Raymarine E02011 E80 8.4-inch Multifunction Navigation Display which I would have to buy all sorts of extras for in order to make it work with what I currently have on the Reel Pirate which is getting more than a little cluttered up top. I have also considered putting up a notebook computer such as my Itronix IX250 and installing RayTech RNS V6.0 which I like and I do have an older Data Marine D7000DGPS and an old Garmin GPS12xl which I could add on to the serial ports (communicating via NMEA) and have my familiar RayMarine look and feel without the heavy price tag. I already have GPS antennas laying around from other boats which I could easily bring into service and the old Itronix I could mount on my same tower platform as where the 600 was.

Comments are open on this blog if anyone has any cheaper solutions (and no I am not getting burned on ebay again)