To kick things off, let's talk about Simrad. This posting isn't about specific issues - those will follow.
This is the culmination of a long battle. I have been finding and reporting problems with my suite of Simrad equipment for about 6 months now. In that time, out of 25 problems reported and documented, exactly one has been resolved.
Now I'm sure you are all thinking "this must be an installation problem". Nope. The installation has been checked and verified and passed with A+ grades. All of the problems are confirmed product bugs.
The biggest issue is that the Radar ARPA function that lets you track targets and project where they are going, is seriously broken. Rather than giving a stable, consistent predictor, it instead wonders all over the place. As a result, it's not usable, and ARPA is a key element of collision avoidance in poor visibility. So the radar needs to go. And the ARPA problem affects both radars, so they are both unusable for navigation.
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| 10KW open array radar removed |
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| 4G Radar removed |
Next is the auto pilot. It steers the boat really well - no problem there. But there seem to be all sorts of interactions with and among the various devices that cause all sorts of other erratic and unpredictable behavior. The system is powered up and down via a button on the AP control panel. That button is supposed to power up/down the control panel and the 4 follow-up steering levers that I have. Sometimes when you power it up, it's not able to discover all the components and generates an alarm. Sometimes when you power it down, only some of the components turn off, and the others generate alarms. It also has a feature by which you select which heading sensor to use. Sometimes the AP remembers the setting across power cycles, and sometimes it doesn't. So the auto pilot has to go.
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| Radar controllers removed from overhead |
Then there is the ripple effect. With the radar gone, the multi function black box computer is of little value since it can't display or control any other vendor's radar. So it goes too, along with its control keypad. But it's also the only way to operate the black box fish finder, so that has to go too. The net result is that every piece if Simrad equipment except the Sat Compass (which still has some problems) has been removed from the boat.
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| Going |
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| Going |
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| Gone |
Now everything is in a big box awaiting return to Simrad. They are doing the right thing by taking the equipment back, but I am still taking a huge bath on the installation and de-installation costs, not to mention the cost of replacing everything with other equipment that hopefully works better.
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| Simrad Box of Shame |
