NEW - Garmin Pay as You Need it Weather Antenna

Capt John · May 17, 2011

For those of you I suggested wait on an affordable XM weather solution from Garmin, this may be your time. They just announced today the soon to be released, pay as you need it GDL 40 XM Weather Antenna that will work with all of their marine NMEA 2000 models. The price is $299.99 (vs $699.99 for the GXM 51) and the usage cost is $4.99 a day.

Here's the press release:

Today Garmin announced the GDL 40, the first and only cellular marine weather receiver for near-shore U.S., European and Canadian boaters that lets you pay for weather as you need it. The GDL 40 is an on-demand solution that lets mariners choose to have weather data on a day-to-day basis, in 24-hour increments at a time. In the U.S., once the GDL 40 is activated, users can purchase a day pass for $4.99, giving you access to live weather radar, wind speeds and direction, sea surface temps, wave heights, local forecasts, county/marine warnings, lightening and more. The datalink works anywhere within range of a cellphone tower. Available next month, the GDL 40 is NMEA 2000 compatible and will work with the following Garmin chartplotters: GPSMAP 6000/7000 series, GPSMAP 4000/5000 series, GPSMAP 700 series and the GPSMAP 4X1/5X1/5X6 series (N2K versions).

I'll post more as I learn it.

Tight lines!

Capt John

Dgeddings · May 17, 2011

would be awesome if lowrance would build something to compete with this, I'd love to have the service for my HDS without the contract

Crow's Nest · May 17, 2011

If it works via Call Towers, what can it give you that you cannot get on an Iphone?

ReelWork · May 18, 2011

Agreed. Also if you're that far offshore, it's useless however the folks are Garmin are pretty smart usually (except for the stupid single access on maps - only one region/card at a time).. Thinking the cell towers are strictly required for activation - sort of like how satellite TV still requires a phone or data line to "reach back" to access account into. I'd guess they probably also allow the user to activate multiple days at a time and if I'm reading into what Capt John wrote, he's saying the same thing (like when leaving port and heading offshore for more than 24 hours).

Think I will stick with VHF and my iPhone. Can see this as a huge winner for the big offshore guys and blow boaters.

Capt John · May 18, 2011

I agree with you regarding the offshore folks. Although there are a lot of cell towers out there on the rigs. I'm not sure how it's all going to work.

However, there are a lot of bay anglers that want the early weather warning without the subscription and high initial investment. I have an iPhone and it doesn't warn me if a fronts headed my way or any other weather related things I need to know. I have to look it up.

My reason for posting this is just to let everyone know it's going to be available soon. Hopefully it'll be useful for some of us.

NEW - Garmin Pay as You Need it Weather Antenna

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