RL70 replacement

[Njc]

Evening - have recently acquired a 2004 Bav 32 which has a Raymarine RL70 Chartplotter and radar. I'd like to replace it with something newer; any recommendations for something which would be a straight replacement? I assume that I'm stuck with Raymarine, unless I want to reinstall the entire system?

Thanks

Nathan

[Yngmar]

RL70 is a Seatalk1 plotter. Depending on serial number of your existing radome, some of the C classic series chartplotters (C70, C120, etc) may be able to use it, but nothing else does. There's a lookup table for the serial numbers somewhere in the Raymarine knowledge base, if you want to go that route. So you'd be looking at replacing plotter + radome. The C classic series uses Compact flash charts instead of C-Map NT cards, so you'd have to replace your charts too.

Anything later is not compatible with Seatalk1. Your best bet is to replace plotter + radome with a current generation one and use a Seatalk1 to SeatalkNG (Raymarine's branding and connectors for NMEA2k) bridge. That way you can get your old (ST60 I presume) instruments connected to your new plotter.

Additionally, the vertical screen shape of the RL70 has fallen out of fashion, so most replacements mean having to rearrange your mounts (depending on how it is currently mounted, this may be easy or hard).

[Njc]

Thank you Yngmar for that response. That's really useful stuff.

Regards

Nathan

[Salty]

If you decide to stay with the RL series of plotters, but want to exchange the RL70 for an RL70C colour display, be aware that the colour plotter in that series has a greater depth from front to back, and will not fit into the same space within the binnacle.
The latest plotters however are much thinner and many will fit within the binnacle, but one other thing to consider is the software used in the newer displays. In my new Raymarine plotter, the software that came with it was supplied by Navionics, and their depiction of shipwrecks in particular is not always correct. Finding one area to be incorrect gives me concern as to what else, and which I have not yet noticed, that may also be shown incorrectly. That aside, connection from Seatalk to SeatalkNG was straightforward and has enabled the old instruments to converse with the the new.