I concur. This was a particularly well-done summary and useful. Our radars are wimpy (based on the video), but good enough for what we ask them to do. Radar envy? Not really.
On Sunday morning we crossed the SF Bay to Berkeley in pea soup fog with visibility about three boat lengths and lots of traffic to pick up niece and nephew. Radar was invaluable crossing the shipping lane which is very busy (note: most dangerous thing on a boat? a schedule). That evening we came back in pitch black, with no moon. Radar was comforting, given ferry traffic. Very glad to have it. And as posted earlier, the San Francisco waterfront at night is pure magic and worth the view.
My late father was a WWII radar tech who eventually got sent to a sweaty rock with no beer in the South Pacific to run radar installations until the end of the war (later a successful architect in southern California). Never fired a gun, but until his dying day was proud of his effort. When we got our Tug, it was a delight to be lectured on every detail of the fancy-schmancy radar in our boat by a vet in his late 80's, and part of the greatest generation. It was a lot of the "walked uphill barefoot through the snow, both ways" kind of talk, but fascinating to his son, none-the-less.
We are technologically lucky with these boats! Spoiled in fact.
Jeff
