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nothing needed...the ap will give you the heading...
the Garmin radar explanation is pretty bad (as are the others) - do yourself a favor and get "radar for mariners" by david burch off amazon - every radar owner should read it...guaranteed it will work twice as well after you understand how to "tune" a radar. There are two instrumnets on a boat that really work better once you understand them: radar and FF's...the auto settings simply don't get it done.
Does the MARPA actually pick up information from the radar (like oil rigs) and steer the autopilot around them?
No, all ARPA/MARPA do is track radar returns. The basic procedure is you engage marpa, select a target (return on the screen) and enable tracking. The system will keep track of it, giving you information on it's heading, speed, and closest time/point of appraoch. You can have it display either relative (to your boat) info or absolute.
It is a great feature and I use it all the time.
Garmin covers the basics, but isn't very robust. Other features you will find in Radar for Mariners aren't supported (either at all or fully). Garmin doesn't support trails for example, and guard zones are very challenged.
But there is no auto avoidance interaction with the AP. I'm not sure I would want that, at least not without a throttle control..... But that's just me.
As gerg said, it won't guide you around them automatically, BUT, if you are on a crash course with a MARPA target, the display does beep and show you a big red blinking sunken ship icon at the point it calculates you will "crash" into the MARPA target. So is does inform you nicely. Here's the Garmin MARPA in action. Came in handy on a very foggy day I was transiting from Montauk to Shelter Island NY. The circles are marpa targets and the system tells me what their heading is, and what their speed is. Cool stuff.
definitely read your manual. and spend some time practicing with it. you can set guard zones for warning, but the marpa is something different. it's pretty easy with the touchscreen since all you really have to do it touch the target to start marpa. ron
Birdman, how does it know those are "marpa" targets. You have to see a boat on your radar and select it or something?
You just touch the screen on or near a blob (radar return), and a little menu pops up with some options, one of them is "Aquire Target". Select that and the unit will circle that target and determine it's heading and speed for you, then assign it a Marpa # and track it.
Marpa...
