GPS & Radar
Buy and sell GPS units and radars in Guatemala.
The channel over the bar at Livingston is unmarked, and sailboats bound up the Río Dulce cross it on waypoints passed from one crew to the next. Off the Pacific coast, a radar earns its place by picking out frigate birds working a bait ball before anyone on deck can see them, and by showing the afternoon storm building between the boat and the beach. Floating handheld GPS units and fixed plotters change hands new and pre-owned alongside radar, from compact domes for a fishing boat’s T-top to open arrays for bigger boats. With radar, the screen it will run on matters as much as the scanner itself.
From a floating handheld to a radar on the T-top:
a marine handheld such as one of Garmin’s GPSMAP marine models is built to float if it goes over the side, which a hiking unit like an eTrex is not, so check which kind a listing really is. It is the backup most owners of small open boats carry. A fixed chartplotter without sonar shows your position on a chart, and many accept an external GPS antenna. Screens that also read the bottom sit under fishfinders, VHF radios and autopilots under marine electronics. Radar comes as a dome, the compact enclosed scanner for a hardtop or a sailboat’s mast, or as an open array, a long rotating bar that needs a bigger boat and an arch. Neither has a screen of its own: it shows only on a display that supports it, from the same maker or its sister brands.
Frigate birds and afternoon squalls off the Pacific coast:
those are the two jobs a radar does on a Guatemalan sport-fishing boat. Garmin, Simrad, Furuno and Raymarine all build bird modes that tune the scanner to pick up a flock diving on bait far beyond eyesight, and the same set paints a storm cell forming between you and the beach. Solid-state scanners add Doppler colouring for targets closing on you, start almost instantly and draw less power, which counts on a small boat running everything off one battery. Height decides range more than power: a dome on a T-top sees further than the same dome on a low rail, because radar stops at the horizon.
Crossing the Livingston bar on a saved track:
on the Caribbean side, GPS matters most where the chart helps least. The channel into the Río Dulce is unmarked and the bar shifts with silt from the river, so crews lean on waypoints from boats that crossed recently and watch the depth. A plotter that records its track lets you leave the way you came, and a floating handheld loaded with the same waypoints is the fallback if the main screen dies halfway across.
Radar prices and the screen that has to drive it:
new, a solid-state dome starts around Q21,000 before the display that runs it, and an open array can cost several times that. A floating handheld with satellite messaging is around Q5,500, plain marine handhelds less. Used radar fetches less than those figures suggest, because a scanner is useless without a screen that can drive it, and it works only within its own brand family, newer scanners only on recent displays. A dome on its own goes cheaply; one sold with a compatible display keeps far more of its value.
Checking a used radome and a handheld GPS:
look up the model number on the scanner’s label in your display’s compatibility list before you travel. Then study the dome: a cover gone chalky or crazed by sun, a crack near the base or rust streaks at the bolts all point to water reaching the array. On an open array, listen to the pedestal spin up for grinding or jerky rotation. Ask to see the radar painting the shoreline on a working screen, with its long cable still on its factory plugs. On a handheld, open the battery door for corroded contacts and a perished seal, then step outside and see how quickly it gets a fix.
Listing a radar with the screen it ran on:
give the exact scanner model, the display and software it last worked with, the cable length and whether it has been cut, and whether the mounting plate comes too. Photograph the top and base of the dome in daylight; for a handheld, list the charts loaded. Radar moves fastest with its screen: an owner switching to a new network often has the old dome and display still working together, and a buyer who can watch them paint the riverbanks from the dock at Fronteras will pay for both.