Category: Navigation

Rose Point Navigation showed off numerous new products and features during the NMEA Conference, as mentioned on Tuesday, but it make take a while for me, or anyone, to sort them all out.  This is especially true as the company has both a “relaxed” marketing style and a tendency to put product perfection over actual shipping dates.  For instance, a week after issuing a stack of press releases, there’s not yet a peep about them on Rose Point’s home page, but instead a link to a “sneak peak” (sic) at Coastal Explorer 2010, a product that will never actually be released!  What is new on the site is info about the heavily stripped down new version of CE called CE Express, which was announced last February in Miami but in fact is the first CE 2011-style software to ship.  Except that the Google Earth-like chart zoom slider seen above in the copy of Express I downloaded last week has already been replaced in the ongoing CE 2010 beta…

Geonav has been talking about a Fall U.S. roll out for some time, but now it’s turning out they have a lot more to show than the G12 and G10 MFDs introduced in Europe last year.  Seen in the photo above is an even newer model called the GIS10, and while it and the 12-inch model include most all the features seen online for the G series, they also support NMEA 2000, Gigabit Ethernet, and, yes, the Side Imaging technology pioneered by sister company Humminbird.  And how about those sexy MID 110 multifunction instrument displays (and the matching autopilot head)?

This week in Newport, and in Southhampton, Simrad introduced the NSO Navigation Series, a black box version of the NSE system, and while it’s hard to imagine an MFD faster than an NSE, even...

Here’s a nifty feature I’d never seen before.  I had already realized that if you click on a nav aid when making a route on a Garmin MFD, the waypoint gets named after the aid.  I find that useful, even if I first came across the feature years ago and think other current MFDs and charting programs include it (anyone remember which ones?).  But I was darn surprised yesterday morning to see that the Garmin 7212 can overlay the nav aid’s complete icon and label on its standard radar screen, if desired.  I like that a lot…

Yup, that’s a Garmin GHC 10 autopilot head steering to an apparent wind angle, along with one end of a linear drive typically used to control sailboat rudders, but never before supported by Garmin.  Announced today is the GHP 12 sailboat autopilot system, which will work with a choice of two linear drives designed to handle sailing vessels from 20 to 70 feet…

Given that FLIR, the big daddy of thermal imaging, purchased Raymarine in May, few will be surprised that Ray is introducing its own thermal cams.  In fact, I think the Raymarine T300 and T400 model series will simply be re-branded FLIR M-Series cameras, though the control and integration possibilities are interesting.  For owners of Raymarine E Wide and G Series MFDs, the joystick control above will be optional; the first group will be able to pan and tilt the camera using their touch screens, as shown, while the latter can use a G’s detached keyboard.  And while the short initial press release doesn’t say anything about niceties like automated target tracking, we already know that the Nexus operating system FLIR builds into these cameras offers such capabilities…

If I can miss major ways that MFDs display currents and tides, lord only knows how much I might mess up a comparison of 3D charting.  There are so many aspects to 3D presentation, and virtually no bench mark as to what is right.  In fact, I’m running the Raymarine E140 Wide screen shot first because it illustrates one of the few things that’s clearly wrong, I think, which is to put the vessel on center, so that you get the most detail of the waters you’ve already passed through.  But Raymarine has long offered good Look Ahead features in its 2D chart presentation (as seen in the left window, set at 2/3rds ahead), and I know that 3D Look Ahead is high on its list of planned software updates…