THE ULTIMATE WEATHER STATION FURUNO'S NEW PB100 AND RD30

One of the hot topics in the marine electronics field is how to obtain weather information. There are several solutions including weather fax, satellite weather forecasts and now real-time weather on-board your vessel. Furuno has joined forces with Airmar Technology Corp. to produce the finest weather station combination on the market, the PB100 interfaced with the RD30.

The PB100 Weather Station measures wind speed and direction without any moving parts. Some of the readouts you will receive from the PB100 include apparent wind speed/direction, true wind speed/direction, barometric pressure, air temperature, relative humidity and compass heading. As an added bonus, the PB100 has been equipped with a genuine Furuno GPS sensor, allowing you to obtain Lat/Lon or use it as a back up GPS.

Information from the PB100 is output as NMEA0183 data and can be sent to a variety of devices, such as a PC, Chart Plotter or Furuno's RD30 NMEA Data Repeater. The RD30 allows you to plug the PB100 in directly to receive data and display the weather information in a large, easy-to-read format. In addition, you can customize the RD30 to display just the information that is important to you. Set audible alarms to warn you when there is a change in temperature, course error, ship speed, cross track error, depth and arrival. You can also have a positive display of own ship's position, apparent and true wind, dew point temperature, wind chill, water temperature, depth and more when you have other sensors attached to the RD30. The RD30 requires less than 2 Watts of power, so adding this unit to your helm will not cause much power consumption.

If you find the need to connect the PB100 to multiple devices, you can do so with the optional NMEA data combiner. This will allow you to mix data from multiple sources and send combined data to multiple devices. The PB100 has an MSRP of $995.00 and the RD30's MSRP is $395.00, a small price to pay to have your own personal weatherman on-board your vessel 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

For more information on Furuno equipment including the PB100, RD30 and the entire line of quality Furuno Electronics, contact: Furuno USA, Inc., 4400 NW Pacific Rim Blvd., Camas, WA 98607. Phone: (360) 834-9300. Fax: (360) 834-9400. http://www.Furuno.com