The plugin has very few hard requirements nowadays, but the functionality does increase with more sensors. Let’s start with a minimal setup and grow this step by step, and see what functionality is enabled by these steps.

It won’t come as a surprise to you that you need a supported radar scanner. If you buy new, we recommend the Navico HALO. It has better definition and more features than the Garmin xHD and the older Navico radars, and we don’t support new Garmin or other brand radars yet.

If you buy secondhand make sure the radar is still working. Like all radome antennas they are susceptible to moisture and not all of them will live to be 20 years old! The lifetime of a magnetron is 2000-4000 hours. Digital radars just die of old age.

The plugin requires a compass heading to be able to show the radar image in stabilized, COG up or North up mode. If there is no compass heading it will just show the radar image as received from the scanner, and the image will not be correct during turns or heavy sea conditions that induce yaw.

The higher the compass rate the better the picture will be in difficult circumstances. With Navico Broadband BR24/3G/4G radars use of an RI-10/11 will improve the picture as well, as the heading in use at the moment of creating the spoke (a ray of radar data in a particular direction) is stored with the data.

The plugin requires a GNSS location (usually GPS) to be able to draw the radar image over the chart (overlay). By default it also requires a compass heading, as COG is not useful at low speeds. There is a setting that allows the use of COG for overlay, but it does mean that the radar overlay is not useful at anchor or other zero/low speed situations. Also is the COG affected by leeway and currents and may point sideways leading to a misplaced overlay picture.

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