The Marine Electronics Hub
At the 2017 Annapolis Sailboat Show, the two cheerful founders of Ugo gave me their original smartphone case to test. And while I find it awkward to use with the large phones I prefer, it is beautifully built and seriously waterproof. So I suspect that Ugo’s new and similarly designed tablet case will be a winner…
It may not be everyone’s idea of a good time, but trying the first dual-color electronic Visual Distress Signal Device (eVDSD) is how a writer trying to cover the present and future of marine electronics gets his kicks. And it happened because the annual and always valuable NMEA Conference is now also the annual RTCM Conference, and also because Panbo covered the event with dual Bens…
In a recent blog post Navionics announced they’ve added vectors to AIS target displays and the ability to edit rate and review ActiveCaptain Community points of interest (POIs). It looks like Navionics is making good on their promise of rapid improvements to their AIS features.
T-Mobile has been busy building out their network and extending their coverage. For many boaters it may be the best compromise of coverage and cost-effectiveness. But, how do you know if their coverage is good enough where you plan to use it? T-Mobile hopes you will take them up on their offer and try 30gb of data and a hot-spot to find out.
Dorian is powered up and perilously close, but while the forecasting is better than ever — based almost entirely on massive data collection and modeling by NOAA — the meteorologists are still quite uncertain about the hurricane’s path. I’m thinking a lot about folks in the Abacos and in the vast areas that might be struck next, but, sorry, I’m also remembering how I managed to use Chuck Berry and Muhammad Ali in the opening paragraph of a July 2003 SAIL magazine article about visiting the National Hurricane Center…
Touchscreens work well for many tasks at a boat helm (and elsewhere), I think, but a touchscreen throttle never even occurred to me until I read about the Navy “reverting to physical throttles” on warships like the USS John S McCain. Holy cow! Why the heck did we deprive destroyer drivers of the excellent (electronic) control interface known as a throttle lever, and why is Wired magazine mispresenting the “reversion”?
I’ve gone to the Maine Boat & Home Show in Rockland for all 17 years (so far) and never failed to discover many things of interest. I had no idea, for instance, that a floating kayak and canoe rack even existed though it was designed and built right in my home town. And this entry includes other unique products made by very small companies in Maine that you too might want to know about…
I enjoyed this Bill Morris article at OceanNavigator.com even though he pokes fun at skippers like me. For one thing, he does it gently and well, as in his elegant second paragraph…I also agree with Bill that a dedicated depth display is a key navigation tool, regardless of what else you’re using. But then again I think that there are better ways to do it than he advocates, and…
The picture tells much of the story. In rain and fog, the three 7-inch Garmin, Simrad, and Raymarine multifunction displays are each showing their respective solid-state Doppler-assisted radomes capturing well the complexity of Rockland Harbor moored vessels and shoreline while also automatically highlighting the most significant moving object…
Way down the long list of new features that came with April’s LightHouse v3.9. update for Raymarine Axiom MFDs is “Tank naming and Sender Calibration” and it turns out that means NMEA 2000 tank senders made by Oceanic Systems. Which is a semi-big deal because a significant disappointment of N2K is that while many standard data PGNs are truly plug-and-play across brands, sensor calibration is usually not…
