When we purchased the Bayliner 4788 Pilothouse, we knew that most of the navigation electronics were either broken or the original part that came with the boat. We have new radar, chartploter, tranducers, and VHF radios on the list to replace. Due to the coronavirus craziness, these items have been on back order and are taking a while to arrive. We received the Simrad VHF radio and installed it today along with the start of the NMEA networking that all the Simrad devices will eventually use to communicate.

The radio that we went with is the Simrad RS40-B.

First we pulled open the area above the wheelhouse windows where the original radio was mounted.

We pulled out the original non-functional VHF radio, cut a new hole for the larger new radio and plugged into the new power and existing antennae, put it all back together, and now we have a functioning VHF radio in the wheelhouse.

Part of the challenge was to get the second VHF antenna routed to the back of the Simrad to be able to broadcast the AIS location information. Getting the wires from the radar arch to the radio mounted above the pilothouse helm was a bit challenging. It actually involved removing the microwave so that we could run wires from the fly bridge and radar arch.

While we had things open we also ran the NMEA network wiring to connect the VHF to the chartplotters, and also the the GPS antennae that will mount on the fly bridge.

Fun fun fun, taking the boat apart to find out how to run wires. So far about 6 hours into the VHF install, most of that time was figuring out where to run wires.

Update 8/11/2020: After our first trip out with the new VHF we discovered that the VHF radio was not working well, it could hardly pick up weather stations, and could not broadcast very far. After some inspection, we discovered about 4 ft upstream from the radio was a connection joint that when jiggled the radio works great, then bump it again and no signal. We took apart the connectors and discovered that the end connectors on each of the cables should have been soldered together, but there was not a drop of solder anywhere in the connection.

Now off to purchase a coaxial cable end to end connector to eliminate the need for the screw on ends, and while we are at it we are going to replace the cable between this connection and the radio. Anytime we are doing work if there is a cable that is feasible to be replaced, we always replace it.