TECHNOLOGY
Words by Malcolm Turner
Broadband Radar –
a revolution or not?
Radar became possible for medium sized yachts and power
boats in the 1980’s when the first practical and affordable set was
launched by Mars under the brand name of Vigil Radar. While
it may seem strange that a company best known for chocolate
confectionary and pet foods should enter the world of marine
electronic equipment, there was a good reason for this at the time.
n addition to its
I
traditional products
Mars, was a large
scale manufacturer of
electronic vending and ticket
machinery. They were looking for
additional areas where they could
make use of this expertise and
came up with marine electronics.
Recent developments at that
time had, in Mar’s view, made
small boat radar both possible
and economically viable and,
since there was no other serious
contender in the field, they
decided to go ahead.
The Vigil sets were relatively
sophisticated for their time with an
electronic bearing line, guard zone
and range rings. However, they
Lowrance Broadband combined chart plotter and radar 10” model
were monochrome and have the
same relationship to modern sets
As one got closer they would separate and be seen for what they were. This
as black and white television has to
was actually a non-problem dreamed up by competitors at the time who indulged
the current generation of flat screen
in “knocking tactics” by comparing Vigil against commercial units used by large
colour models of today.
merchant vessels. It is interesting that the small boat radars of today operate
within the same beam width of around five degrees.
One of the criticisms made against
Vigil at its launch was that the radar
Mars found the marine equipment field too small for their type of operation
signal had a relatively wide beam
and after they left the field, their lead was followed by a number of Far East
width due to the necessary small
manufacturers who, in turn, were succeed by the current top three marine
size of the antenna. They were even
equipment suppliers of Raymarine, Garmin and Navico.
accused of trying to “change the law
of physics”. In fact what the larger
Radar sets from these companies have become increasingly sophisticated and
beam width meant in practise was
user friendly with analogue systems being replaced by digital processing. Coupled
that at around 12 miles two vessels
with this has been the development of multi-screen units which not only combine
close to each other could appear on
with a chart plotter but can also show information from all of the vessel’s
the radar screen as one.
other instruments.
32  MULTIHULL REVIEW : JUNE 2009
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