Maltese Falcon vs Nordic 40, the tonnage rule
AIS is great, but it’s just a tool to help a skipper mind the rules of the road, including the “tonnage rule” being violated above in San Francisco Bay last week…
Monthly Archive: October 2008
Garmin nüvi 500 & GPSMap 640, yipe!
How behind is Panbo? Well, in July I whined about Garmin’s introduction of the touchscreen Oregon handheld before I’d yet written much about the somewhat similar Colorado. While I’ve been testing…
Electronic Marlin teasers, who knew?
What can’t be improved with electronics? Hence the battery going up the hind end of the Sevenstrand Electronic Acoustic Lure above. The idea is…
AIS Class B, really on the map
Check the stats! They indicate that at one moment earlier today one particular network of AIS coastal receivers was seeing 763 AIS Class A transponders from scattered towers around the U.S. And one Class B. Guess whose 5 meter pleasure (and electronics testing) vessel that was?
The Wizard, prize-worthy antenna magic?
How about a 5” square “multi-band bisynchronous simultaneous reception and transmission ” antenna that doesn’t need to be mast-mounted and can handle frequencies from AM and shortwave through FM and VHF and up into cellular, GPS, sat phones, and WiFi…three radios at once?!?
Navionics Mobile, & other iPhone apps
It’s come to my attention that not every Panbo reader is obsessed with AIS! So how about a new charting app for the iPhone? That would be Navionics Mobile, which was just introduced…
Navico NAIS-300 Class B, FCC certified!
Wow, the Class B AIS story is moving fast. If I’m understanding the FCC Equipment Authorization database correctly (select “AIS” from the “Equipment Class” drop-down list), last Friday, 10/3/2008, Navico added one last submission to its NAIS-300 application—the photo above—and the unit was certified that very day, along with…
NMEA new guy, Digital Yacht
The one-day product exhibit at the NMEA Conference is never long enough for me, and I hope the manufacturers I missed—often the ones I know the best—took no offense (you know where to find me!). I put particular focus on companies appearing at NMEA for the first time, like Digital Yacht above…
Icom AIS receiver, and more on Class B
What with Class B AIS transponders finally coming to market, a new AIS receiver may seem irrelevant. But it’s from Icom, it seems to be designed and priced right, and I suspect that it will be a winner…
Early autopilots, the motivation
Check out this recent entry in Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors great series of retro ads. It dimly reminded me of autopilots on the old fishing boats I spend time around in…
