Sounder problem answers?
Mickey, it looks like the problems are in the lower end units, like the dual frequency 265, 365 and the 470. The problem shows up one to two months after instaled. The 470 retailing at close to $500 is not cheap. Your unit on the other hand is top end and most likely, if no problem has shown up yet, will be trouble free. In eletronics, when new, most of the time, you turn it on first time it should work, if not instalation might be the problem or a bad chip, meaning the unit is bad. These units worked fine for several months, then the problem started, this is more likely a software bug and has shown up in many units returned to our store.Here is another thought on Raymarine formerly Raytheon, it seems that after Raymarine broke off from Raytheon, quality has gone down. I subscribe to Practical Sailor and have seen the Raytheon VHF radio slip from a #1 rating to a #3. The radar and top end systems still seem to work very well and the radar was top rated by PS most recently, but the support and quality is no longer there. It is unreal to be told to switch off parts of a system to get it to work after it had worked fine for several months. To send the unit in for a month and be told they need to send you a new one because they couldn't get it to work. To have a Raymarine tell a customer to buy a upper end model and then say it has problems also.In our store we don't encourage the sale of Raymarine products even though we get sale's insentives for selling them. Garmin, Furuno and Lowrance are what we recomend, these brands see a far less defect rate and have excellent tech support. Garmin having software updates online for free on most of their products.I feel this is a long answer, but I wanted to give you a fair account of my rating of Raymarine.