The Marine Technology Hub
It’s wonderful that the marine electronics world is still small enough that a tiny company with a good idea can get somewhere. But I’m not sure that having your Icom M504 VHF modified by Marine Werke so it can output AIS audio signals is a good idea…
Flash of Beauty sailed from Camden three Wednesdays ago and is now passing over the top of Scotland, as you can see live on its Spot track sharing page. Tom and crew are planning to stop in Stormness, and…
Excellent news: Shine Micro has figured out a way to ship its Class B AIS securely locked into silent mode (receive only) so that it’s legal here in the U.S.A., even though the FCC commissioners continue to drag their feet on Class B approval. The idea is that…
Sometimes you-know-who works in mysterious ways. On Saturday afternoon I watched a long-time friend, Tom Amory, set sail for Finland with his daughter and her friend, but without the Simrad AI50 Class B AIS transponder he’d tried so hard to obtain…
Milltech Marine is carrying a new AIS display of particular interest to power-sensitive offshore sailors. The Vesper Marine AIS WatchMate has a 5–inch “daylight readable” screen but purportedly only draws 1.2 watts average, 2.5 max. The $499 unit is not a receiver and does not do graphic target plotting, but…
I haven’t done one of these AIS miscellaneous entries since last June, but even then was wondering why the FCC hadn’t yet approved Class B! Now it seems like the U.S. marine safety community has gone into a state of depression about it…
I guess this sort of thing was inevitable, thanks to FCC recalcitrance, but still it’s a sad sale for all but a few. Apparently PortVision, an interesting U.S.-based commercial marine information service, has concluded that the FCC is not about to allow Class B AIS anytime soon, and is liquidating its inventory of SRT transponders. You may recall that…
OK, admittedly I’m in a foul too-much-work mood, and maybe that’s why I find NASA’s new AIS Engine 2 so totally exasperating…
Last Wednesday night, the 97′ clam dredge Captain Joe sank suddenly 30 miles off Point Pleasant, New Jersey in 10′ seas. Air and sea temperatures were in the low 40’s and the wind NW near 30 knots (according to a nearby C-Man buoy). You can hear some, maybe all, of the bone-chilling…
A month or so ago reader Derek Love (thanks!) wrote in about an interesting combination VHF transceiver and AIS receiver previewed by Icom UK at the London Boat Show. It got a little coverage plus there’s an Icom UK web page about it, though…
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