Panbo punts, Garmin grieves
This entry’s title is not about cause and effect; my wind sensor testing may go incomplete, but that has nothing to do with Garmin’s chart problem. And while I had a good time on...
Yearly Archive: 2009
N2K wind #1, Gizmo testing begins (update)
Yes, this rig is raising some eyebrows around Camden Harbor, but I think it will teach me more about NMEA 2000 wind sensors than I’ve been able to figure out in the lab. I’ve...
FCC Ship License hell, but Group MMSI achieved
So now that I have a real yacht, and hope to take her foreign one day, it seemed proper to get an official FCC Ship Station License. And better sooner than later since it...
Electronics power feeds, what’s truly bad?
Bert van den Berg, proprietor of Cruz Pro, writes that “Once every few weeks or so we get an instrument back or get a call from someone who says one of our instruments is acting erratically. Almost invariably it ends up that the customer (or worse, their electrical installer) has done something dumb and wired it so that the instrument is susceptible to voltage transients. For this reason I have written an article to help show how electronic installers would wire electronics into a boat as opposed to how many electrical installers wire electronics into a boat…Please have a look and let me know what you think.”
Educational Passages, fun with GPS tracking
Here I am trying to cover the world of marine electronics from my nest in Camden, Maine, and darned if I don’t miss interesting happenings in my own neighborhood. Apparently Richard Baldwin, an experienced bluewater solo sailor who lives just up the Bay in Belfast, is the passion and brains behind an unique endeavor that’s using mini sailing drones like the prototype above to teach students of all ages about oceanography, not to mention GPS and satellite communications…
Comar AIS-MULTI receiver, looks great but…
After METS 2007, I wrote about how many new AIS products Comar had in the pipeline. Well, this U.K. company hasn’t slowed down, and has even developed a snappy new logo and Web site. Comar’s latest is this AIS-Multi, which seems like quite an able AIS listener at $399 (from U.S. distributor Milltech Marine). It features true parallel receivers, so slow Class B updates will plot as well as they can; an amplified VHF splitter, so you don’t need to add another antenna; USB data output, so you can connect it to a modern PC without needing a serial converter; and, finally, the ability to multiplex in NMEA 0183 data at 4800 baud (GPS most likely), so the unit’s 38,400 baud data output can be easily used with a plotter whose NMEA 0183 port was already in use (and the PC will get it, too). But…
Gizmo update, careful with the wipers!
So Gizmo’s nifty, and now semi-permanently installed, PC charting system could have perished abruptly in a nasty mix of saltwater and glass chards. But it didn’t. In fact we were tied up on our float before the slow shatter of tempered glass became evident. And it was really me, not the boat, at fault. On Memorial Day, soon after we set out for home from Pulpit Harbor on North Haven (note the link: it’s great news that MyTopo has revived the old Maptech mapserver), the running port windshield wiper went overboard with a bang. It was blowing 20 knots Northwest right on our nose with short, sharp seas, and we were taking serious bow spray even at 7 knots, but none of that broke the window…
A57, iPhone, & HDS-10 — Navionics everywhere
The photo isn’t fair, because the shooter (me) is reflected in the Raymarine A57D‘s screen and the iPhone is in an Otter Box which includes a screen protector that muted its display in a way I don’t notice in normal use. But there’s some truth here, too; the screen on the Lowrance HDS 10 has been bright, crisp, and completely readable in all light conditions so far experienced on Li’l Gizmo’s completely exposed helm, whereas the other two have sometimes been quite hard to read. Another truth is…
Class B rollout, looking better, but mysterious
Ever since I realized that the free Siitech.com AIS pro web viewer can count and/or filter AIS types, I’ve been using it occasionally in an attempt to gauge the spread of Class B in...
GPS problems? Boaters last!
I think that the Google news search above, and those 397 articles you can click through to, mostly indicate that the US General Accounting Office accomplished its goal: Light a fire under the collective...
