Category: AIS

As noted recently Digital Yacht is on a new product roll.  To my knowledge this SmarterChart SC500A is the first new C-Map plotter in quite a while, and the first plotter to have a built-in AIS receiver period .  At $799 list, it might be just the thing for open helms on some smaller boats, for which DY also has a new line of helm pods (though they don’t seem to be online yet).  But some bigger boats might want one of these to serve mainly as an AIS target plotter (it has NMEA 0183 output too), and there are a couple of other interesting developements in that department… 

When I recently looked into the dismal-looking future of eLoran in the U.S., and read some of your comments to that entry, I felt obliged to write Secretary Napolitano asking her not to kill the Loran system.  My most unusual, and hopefully persuasive, argument was that she would be serving her boss — President Obama — best by reversing a poor decision that he’s endorsed, even crowed about.  Telling it like it is, even when that’s contrarian, is often the most constructive thing we can do for our friends and colleagues.  It’s in that spirit that I feel obliged today to note that my friends at gCaptain have introduced an iPhone AIS app that doesn’t seem competitive…

Very cool!  It looks like the compact and relatively inexpensive Class A AIS Transponder that SRT teased last summer is not only getting close to real, but that it will also — nice surprise — have NMEA 2000 output (in addition to regular NMEA 0183 HS and RS232 PC outputs).  The ComNav data sheet is available here (thanks, Dave!), but there are some caveats…

I’ve enjoyed the Ship Finder AIS viewing app as it’s gained features and available feeds, and particularly like how the latest 1.7 version draws targets with their reported heading (and course predictor lines if...

I am a wee bit jealous.  That’s my brother-in-law Richard Itkin driving his Grand Banks 42 Brilliant down Chesapeake Bay this morning, having left New York Harbor yesterday morning (and Barrington, RI, on Tuesday).  As a guy who drove submarines and sub tenders for the U.S. Navy, Rich has a well developed appreciation for collision avoidance, and he’s been tickled with the ACR Nauticast B AIS transponder he installed a few weeks ago.  But before I pass on his reports, please click on the screen above, so I can note something I just realized regarding MarineTraffic.com.

The iPhone AIS app Ship Finder got updated a few weeks back, and darned if it didn’t add a large Eastern Seaboard feed that even includes the Penobscot Bay listening stations set up by the local pilots.  That feed hasn’t been public for some time, and I’m tickled to have it in my pocket, even if the data is delayed an hour.  Ship Finder is improved in several other ways, too, and has become one of my favorites.  Red Sky, incidentally, is a handsome 30m Swan that’s been hanging around Camden this summer.  Now I know she’s at Lyman Morse in Thomaston, which is near enough to the Rockland listening tower that her 2 watt Class B transponder gets picked up.  The same tower doesn’t see even 12 watt Class A’s in Camden, largely because of the hills, but if I get down the Bay next week (hoping), maybe I can engage in some AIS-style navel gazing?  And, now, for more serious matters…

In 2005, when Software Radio Technology talked about a Class B AIS transponder retailing for $500, I expressed some skepticism.  But “good work takes time” (as I often say about my home-built home), Class B has almost reached that price point in 2009 (largely thanks to SRT), and — holy cow, Batman — wait til you hear what they’ve got in the pipeline.  For starters, how about a small, high performance Class A transponder that will cost “well below $2,000” and will be available to client companies (SRT sells nothing direct) “at the end of 2009”?  And apparently that’s as both an OEM product virtually ready to ship or as a two-board module ready to get additional features (like NMEA 2000 output) and/or be integrated into ECDIS, plotters, VHF radios, etc…

I’ve been testing a SevenStar SeaTraceR Class B AIS transponder for couple of weeks now, mostly on Gizmo but also in the lab.  I could not detect any significant performance differences between it and other Class Bs, even when quickly swapping antenna connections and counting targets.  But it does have a nice over/under tilt mount that lends itself to numerous install positions, and it also has wires for a remote silent switch, like the ACR Nauticast B (though, also like the ACR, it has no built-in switch).  I’m pretty much convinced that the first generation Class B transponders all perform similarly (and pretty well), but what will we see when the next generation comes along?…