Panbo

The Marine Electronics Hub

Yearly Archive: 2011

Standalone, economical instruments; Si-Tex finds it niches? 17

Fishing & Sonar / The Trade

Standalone, economical instruments; Si-Tex finds it niches?

Si-Tex_SDD-110_depth.jpg

I sometimes wonder how the smaller marine electronics manufacturers will get along as more and more boaters seem to go with systems centered on do-it-all MFDs from the Big Four brands. So it’s good to read on the Si-Tex home page that the company turned a profit in its first year under new management. The trick seems to be filling niches that the big boys have largely abandoned, like the new standalone SDD-110 Digital Depth Gauge above, which will drop right into the hole left by a venerable Datamarine Offshore Sounder and only retails for $349, excluding an ‘inexpensive’ transducer…

Buddy’s Garmin 740, big screens for small boats 3

Navigation

Buddy’s Garmin 740, big screens for small boats

Jack_and_Garmin_740.jpg

That’s my good buddy Jack aboard the 21-foot powerboat he’s named Buddy. The photo was taken a couple of Saturdays ago when he had just relaunched the boat after an extensive refit, and I’d like to think that Jack is indicating his happiness with my electronics advice. He’s a dedicated Garmin user — and the man responsible for the gorgeous all-Garmin helm I featured here — but he was thinking of going with a GPSMap 546 until I talked him into the 740…

Navico Broadband Radar 3G, better range & lower cost! 49

Navigation

Navico Broadband Radar 3G, better range & lower cost!

Simrad_BR24_3G_comparison_with_original.jpg

The nice Navico news today is that the original Broadband Radar BR24 scanner is getting replaced by a new model called 3G, which “delivers two-times greater RF transmit power and 30 percent more range and target detection.” You can see the improved performance at 6 mile range on the splt screen shot above (click on image to see larger version). And get this: The new Simrad 3G radomes will retail at $1,700, considerably less than the original…

Nigel Calder update, charts & HyMar 14

Electrical & Engines / Charts

Nigel Calder update, charts & HyMar

Calder_Gizmo_iPad_cPanbo.jpg

Nigel Calder and I talked non-stop for about six hours on Friday (and probably could have kept going if we were younger men). He visited because he’s working on a new edition of How to Read a Nautical Chart and wanted to check out the latest in electronic charts, particularly the mobile apps. I was happy to help with that, and I also got to ask some questions about Gizmo’s systems and find out what’s up with his marine hybrid project. I’ve always liked Nigel’s chart book; while it’s largely a nice reprint of NOAA’s Chart 1 guide to symbology — no longer published by NOAA, though available for download — it also includes some terrific history of cartography along with analysis of where it’s going electronically. I’ll be particularly interested to see what he discovers when visiting the Chart of the Future project at UNH, which is apparently related to a new vector chart standard (interesting S100 PDF here). I was also pleased to learn that Nigel shares my enthusiasm for improving charts with crowd sourcing and even for 3D charting, and he’s not a guy who’s easily impressed with the latest thing…

BoatUS towing app, & the iPad Grip 4

Wireless & Apps / Safety & SAR

BoatUS towing app, & the iPad Grip

BoatUS_towing_app_and_Pad_Grip_on_Gizmo_cPanbo.jpgGizmo is still ashore, but she shed her shrink-wrap this week and today I had a few enjoyable hours aboard tidying up and fooling with some new accessories. One is the handy mount holding the iPad up next to the Datalux police car computer (which apparently survived the winter aboard fine), but first let’s talk about the free and very clever BoatUS smartphone app showing on the pad. Some of the features alluded to in that link aren’t enabled yet, but its primary function — making an automated call for a tow — worked very well in my test…

The XTE issue, autopilot behavior & electronics dollars 53

Navigation / The Trade

The XTE issue, autopilot behavior & electronics dollars

autopilot_testing_in_the_rain_cPanbo.JPG

All those bodies boating in the rain represent a lot of money spent over a problem never fully “solved”…which may be why I let the story gather dust for many months. Two are representatives from Raymarine who drove several hours to investigate why the boat’s new ST7002 control head and SPX30 course computer autopilot system was still making the owner very unhappy. The other two are employees of Wayfarer Marine, which had already put about ninety hours — some of it uncharged — into what had seemed at first to be a simple replacement needed because the boat’s original Raymarine 300 course computer (manual PDF still available) stopped turning in one direction. Anyone with an autopilot, or concerns about the cost of marine electronics, might want to know more about what happened…

Chirp fishfinding, Garmin & Simrad in Miami 4

Fishing & Sonar

Chirp fishfinding, Garmin & Simrad in Miami

Garmin_GSD26_demo_MIBS2011.JPG

Despite a fair bit of reporting on MIBS 2011 (Google search here), I failed to discuss what I saw during the back-to-back demonstrations of chirp fishfinding just before the show. In a word, it WORKS! All the writers — many of whom do a lot more fishing than I do — seemed to agree that they’d never before seen the target resolution imaged by both the Garmin GSD 26 and the Simrad BSM-2. And in some cases — like the fishy wreck near the Miami Harbor entrance above — we got to see both implementations of chirp in almost identical situations…