Few things annoy boaters more than clutter on a radar screen. The last thing a skipper needs while tracking an oncoming boat is a bunch of unwanted signals from land, birds or weather. Clutter can turn a radar screen into an indecipherable mess, making it harder than it should be to maintain situational awareness and be safe out on the water.
That’s why it’s good news to see Garmin incorporating scan averaging as a feature in its new GMR xHD3 series of open-array radars. These are the first magnetron radars from Garmin to have the scan-averaging feature, which helps filter out sea clutter and interference on the display.
“We are excited to build on the foundation of our previous open-array radars and bring more premium features that will appeal to mariners of all types,” says Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of global consumer sales. “Whether you’re cruising overnight, fishing offshore or just out for the day, Garmin’s new xHD3 open-array radars look far and wide to deliver an incredibly clear picture of what’s out there, maximizing situational awareness and giving you more peace of mind every time you leave the dock.”
Additional features include target-size processing, which uses pulse expansion to help optimize on-screen object shapes for better interpretation at all range scales, and true echo trails, which display a historical trail of boats on the water, removing relative motion influence to help quickly identify moving targets and potential collision threats. For anglers who want to follow birds to the fish, the xHD3 open arrays have auto bird gain and a bird-mode preset feature.
An overlay feature on the GMR xHD3 series lets the single antenna provide split-screen, side-by-side images on a compatible chart plotter, with independent settings for close and long range. A radar overlay can also be added on top of a chart view, so skippers can see any differences between the chart and what the radar is showing.
All of these features add up to a better sense of whatever is around the boat, which, in turn, creates a safer and better boating experience overall.
Sizing Options
The antennas are available in 4- or 6-foot versions with 4, 12 or 25 kW of power, and they have a 100-knot wind rating, which Garmin says is commercial-grade weather performance for recreational boaters. Rotation speeds are 24 and 48 rpm for fast redraw rates.
In the Zone
This series of radars lets boaters use Garmin’s Guard Zone feature on compatible chart plotters. Guard Zone helps create even more situational awareness on board, since it can alert boaters whenever an object comes within a boater-defined area around the vessel.
