SIMRAD 4G radar, Red Dot of Death

[mainship]

Have a 2017 SIMRAD 4G radar that has been discontinued by SIMRAD. Was working fine two days ago but yesterday stopped showing targets, only one red dot on screen, although it had good power and I could hear it transmitting. Called SIMRAD and they said that was the "red dot of death". They were quite sure  that the dome was bad, not cables etc. Told me to ship it in and they would send me a HALO 20 replacement for $1100. Which is significantly cheaper than buying a new one. Pretty surprised that a 7 year old radar is dead. If I did not have so much other SIMRAD electronics, I would probably switch to Garmin

[FishAddict]

I feel like most of these MFG's are shooting for a 5 year or less product.  If you get 5-10 years it's just living on borrowed time and when it dies it's a black box swap to something new.  Furuno is one of the few companies that you can still drive your stuff to the Camas shop and they will fix 20+ year old gear.  It will be interesting to see if they keep that up with the new TZT series or if they become more like all the others and just offer discounted replacements.

I haven't used the Halo 20, but I do have both the 4G and the Halo 20+ on different boats.  I would definitely upgrade to the Halo 20+ if your head unit supports dual range radar.

[mainship]

Thanks Fishaddict! Yes, I am going the Halo 20+ route, hopefully the swap out will be painless.

[FishAddict]

You might want to ask them about adapter cables.  I believe one is available so you don't have to pull the new cable to your radar.

[Kimbrey]

Interesting and as you said surprising.  I know with all the larger commercial radars (Furuno) that I used through the years when things started to go South on a radar it usually took a magnetron swap and or new brushes in the motor.  The only other problem I saw on one radar was the gearing in the scanner was metal.  It would over time grind putting metal dust or grindings on the main board shorting it out.  Also we hardly ever turned the radars off unless we were at the dock.  Many, many more hours of use compared to how we use radars on our sport boats....hear again...surprising.

Were you showing weaker targets before the fail which would indicate the magnetron failing? 

[mainship]

Were you showing weaker targets before the fail which would indicate the magnetron failing?

Kimbrey, the day it failed, it would not show land at all, when I first turned it on although land was less than 1/4 mile away. However, several targets showed up. By the end of the day, it was jsut showing the red dot in the center which marks my boat.