January 2009
I’m sure I’m not the only person in the world who wants a phone to make phone calls – rather than to take pictures or play music. So I was intrigued to see Koden’s new MDC 900, on display on Mantsbrite’s stand at the boat show. It’s a radar. Just a radar. It doesn’t display charts or engine data, or tell you how deep the water is. And although it does have a menu key, it also has proper twiddle-knobs for gain and clutter controls, and an up and down switch for range.
The guts of the MDC900, though, are bang up to date, with hardware features that include a bonded screen to eliminate the possibility of condensation obscuring the display, and an RGB output to feed radar images to another monitor or to a video recorder. Software features include an AIS interface and an Automatic Tracking Aid (mini ARPA) and the almost obligatory split-screen function.
One of the cleverest functions, though, is one that I haven’t come across on a small boat radar before. It’s called “True trails”, and at first glance appears to be just like the “Trails” or “Wakes” facility that has been around on radars for yonks, in which each contact leaves a slug-trail behind it as it slips down the screen. But after watching it for a few moments, you notice that some contacts aren’t leaving a trail. In particular, you notice that land masses don’t leave trails. Nor do buoys or anchored ships. Only moving objects produce trails. Neat.
The MDC900’s 8.4-inch colour display unit can be mated to any of a variety of antenna options, including a 17”, 2kW radome with 24NM range, a 25”, 4kW radome with 32NM range or a 3ft/4ft open array antenna with 48NM range.
Prices from
www.mantsbrite.com
