RayMarine's final answer
The thread below is the questions and answers that I received. They read from bottom to top. It looks like the tech rep just doesn't have the information that I am looking for, and perhaps it just isn't available at all for a 10-year old instrument.
I will try a few things this weekend- primarily the order of power up on the radar, autopilot, and chartplotter. The autopilot is the equipment on the Seatalk bus that repeats the NEMA chartplotter data, so maybe it has an influence also.
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Discussion Thread
Response (George Martin)
07/17/2008 10:19 AM
In all honesty I do not have any more information on this, I do not feel that there is any problem with the system and both of the type symbols you are seeing are OK. We are dealing with a 10 year old system that will not be changed in any way.
Customer (Richard Stidger)
07/16/2008 03:40 PM
One other question- which of the two symbols is the correct one? That is, since the symbol is not selectable, only one of the two that I receive is the one designed into the unit firmware.
Which one is the designed symbol?
Customer (Richard Stidger)
07/16/2008 03:38 PM
If the symbol was a reverse image, then the circle would be "white" instead of black. The background of the screen is "white" in day-mode, so a black circle would be the correct image vs the inverse image.
Note that the only difference between the two symbols is the dark diamond in the center.
I will be at my boat over the next few days and I will spend some time trying to create the circle-only symbol.
If you have any ideas on what I might try to accomplish this, please advise.
Response (George Martin)
07/16/2008 02:40 PM
What may be happening here is a reverse video image of the waypoint circle. If you drop a waypoint on land the only way to see the circle would be to reverse the image on the circle so it can be seen. With a mono unit you only have 2 colors to work with.
Customer (Richard Stidger)
07/16/2008 01:35 PM
The waypoint is placed to one side of a nav aid and you can see from the screen shot that I sent that the radar target is not the diamond-shape in the center of the circle.
I agree that the there is no published way a user can change the waypoint symbol, but can you explain why it appears differently at random times?
Is the waypoint symbol somehow related to weather the radar or the GPS is powered up first?
The software version of this display is SL70 3.38.
Response (George Martin)
07/16/2008 01:04 PM
Are you dropping the waypoint on a navigational aid? There are not any different waypoint symbols available on this older unit so there is no way to change the symbol.
Customer (Richard Stidger)
07/15/2008 11:09 PM
I have a Raytheon RL70 radar display (vintage about 1999) and when the waypoint is displayed on the screen from my GPS, it takes one of two different forms.
Most times the waypoint "lollipop" looks like a circle with a solid diamond shape inside of it. This is the usual symbol.
However, once in a while I get a symbol that is just a clear circle - a truer looking "lollipop".
I really prefer the clear circle display because then the radar target is easier to see, but I can't figure out how to select that symbol all of the time. Actually I don't select it at all, it is a random occurrence.
See the attached picture for the two symbols.
These two different symbols have occurred with my old Micrologic ML250 GPS and my current Garmin GPSMAP492 chartplotter. This is not a new issue; these two symbols have randomly appeared for many years.
Is there a way to choose the open circle symbol all the time?
