Monthly Archive: July 2005

Shoes, can’t help myself 3

Shoes, can’t help myself

OK, so I was nosing around Harkenstore.com looking for specs on some cam cleats I need for my Rhodes 18. Couldn’t help but check out the clearance section, and, wow, there beckon lots of the...

Northstar 69, electronics easter egg 1

Northstar 69, electronics easter egg

I knew about “Easter Eggs”—little jokes or animations hidden behind odd key combinations in PC software, particularly games—but I just learned last week about pushing star69 on a Northstar. Apparently back in the Loran days, the...

Race transponders, a new wrinkle 0

Race transponders, a new wrinkle

Some 75 boats in tomorrow’s 97th running of the Mackinac race will be using a new FlagShip transponder supposedly built to very high standards. It’s quite compact (empty Bass Ale bottle for size reference only), operates on...

Adveto advanced AIS presentation, & more 3

Adveto advanced AIS presentation, & more

  The animation above shows how AIS system data can be used to predict a vessel’s future track, even “bottom sweep”—in this case 2 minutes ahead of its actual position, speed, rate of turn, etc. It’s...

Sail performance software, free 0

Sail performance software, free

Above is output from a free program developed in France called GPSActionRelay. It is written in Java, and will suppossedly run on any operating system. Features include replay of several boats in a regatta, polar...

Humminbird side scanning, as good as it looks? 2

Humminbird side scanning, as good as it looks?

Last week I mentioned (relatively) inexpensive side scanning sonar, and here’s what I’m talking about. This 7” diagonal Humminbird 981c, which retails at about $1,650, is a conventional 750 watt dual frequency (50/200kHz) fishfinder that’s also...

Safe Pass plotting, why not? 4

Safe Pass plotting, why not?

Fred Pot showed me a really interesting new concept in target plotting that was developed at a Dutch maritime school. Currently many plotters/PCs and radars can automatically use ARPA and/or AIS info to calculate the CPA (Closest Point of...