B&G announced ForwardScan, a forward-looking sonar device for finding anchoring spots and highlighting rocks and obstructions below the water’s surface.
ForwardScan allows sailors to avoid potentially dangerous areas and sail with confidence in unfamiliar waters. With an effective range of eight times the actual water’s depth, real time updates and a built-in configurable shallow depth alarm, B&G ForwardScan integrates with other collision-avoiding technologies, such as broadband radar; ensuring sailors avoid costly navigation mistakes.
ForwardScan combines with SonarHub and the B&G Zeus2 and Zeus2 Glass Bridge systems to provide a 2D representation of the water and bottom structure ahead, removing the need for a separate display and saving on precious helm space. It gives a 2D underwater depth view and, at the same time, provides a depth interpretation, known as heading line view, that uses a colour coded heading line extension to illustrate shallow water, medium water depth and deep water. Sailors can also learn from historical sonar logs, as the ForwardScan screen shows depth history in relation to the boat’s current position.
ForwardScan sonar operates at 180kHz to reduce interference from traditional 200kHz echo sounders, so sailors get the clearest picture available of what’s up ahead. ForwardScan images can also be viewed on a smartphone and viewed and operated from a tablet, when used on vessels equipped with the B&G GoFree WiFi-1 system.
ForwardScan sonar will be available from Q4 2014, the transducer will sell for AU$599 RRP, NZ$737 and a complete system is available from AU$899 RRP and NZ$1106 RRP.
The SonarHub sounding system is required in order to use ForwardScan.
