I am wondering what recent watch keeping practice really is. Does the watch keeper pay more attention to radar or AIS?

This isn't just academic, I have the masts down and am doing a little refitting. I will be replacing the radome with something a bit more modern, going to replace the AIS receiver with a Class B transponder, and I am wondering about the radar transponder. I have a Munro, it is X band only. Many ships at sea don't seem to look much at X band. Both Munro and Echo make dual band transponders now, the Echo seems to be more powerful and also more available in the US. But I began to think that maybe there is much greater dependence these days on AIS. Is a ship watch likely to miss you on Class B AIS but see you on S band radar?

I have seen all kinds of things of course, several very large fishing vessels for example off of Nova Scotia at night under autopilot with a completely vacant bridge. Nothing will help that situation. The Boston-Salem high speed ferry had no working AIS, nor did many of the New York harbor ferries. But most ships seem to, and betting on human laziness I was guessing that AIS gets more attention than radar these days - its just too easy. Would like to hear from people who know. Also early on there was a bit of controversy about the spec allowing Class A receivers to filter Class B targets, to keep them from cluttering the screen. Whether this is a real concern I do not know.

I would just go ahead and do the XS band, except that it has a three wire cable, so I have to chase a new cable all the way from the nav station to the mizzen truck which I am reluctant to do.