More shopping - Radar reflectors

It's back to the t'interweb again today. Shop 'till you drop ...

Next major item on the shopping list is a radar reflector. OK, we've got one but I hate it.

It's one of these horrible things to my right, I bought the wrong size (the big one) and I've lost all the plastic corner covers so it has "sail shredder" written all over it.

It's a pain in the backside to hoist anywhere useful and gets in the way once you've got it up there. Lowered to the deck it's an even bigger nuisance to dismantle and stow and I hate the bloody thing.

It was quite cheap though I suppose. Anyway, whilst I was tempted for a while by the inflatable reflector from Echomax it still suffers from the problem of having to be hoisted and lowered, stowed away and blown up and so on and what I really want is a permanent solution that's up there, well, permanently

In an ideal world we'd fit an active dual-band radar "reflector" which actually, as its name suggests actively transmits a signal that shows up on the big boys radar. However, they are not at all cheap, about four times the price of a passive reflector and ten times the price of the sail shredder, and they need constant power.

So we're stuck with a passive reflector of which there are many. About the best all round performer in the tests is the Echomax E230 but that's a bit big for us so we'll go for the smaller EM180. It's radar cross-section doesn't quite meet the RORC standard but since we're not going to be taking part in ocean racing I can live with that! At 8m2 it's still MUCH more visible than Brigantia

That's slightly over another hundred quid heading from my coffers to enrich the chandlers. Hey ho.

We'll also need some jointing compound to go between the brackets and the mast to prevent galvanic corrosion. Oh look, that's a mere snip at £14.57. And Monel rivets are peanuts too, not! £2.29 for a pack of 6 rivets? Jesus! 

Right, back to rigging next .,..