The Marine Electronics Hub
I’m a longtime fan of the DeLorme inReach as a two-way messenger, tracker, and safety device for boating (and other uses), especially when we wander beyond cellular coverage. Panbo inReach coverage goes back to...
As the title suggests, I’m not confident that I should have taken Gizmo on a 24-hour solo jaunt from Norfolk to Atlantic City in what looked like dicey weather conditions. Some readers may think I endangered myself and others, and they may well have a point…
Fort Lauderdale, FL on April 4th, 2018 – Safety specialist ACR Electronics is continuing to lead the drive to raise 406 MHz beacon awareness by coordinating the sixth and highest profile annual 406Day yet on this Friday, April 6th…
Stonington, Conn. – The Coast Guard Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to the education and welfare of all Coast Guard members and their families, announced today that its 25th annual Tribute to the Eighth Coast Guard District will be held at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana…
WILSONVILLE, OR – February 15, 2018 – FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: FLIR) announced today their most advanced solid-state marine radar, the Quantum® 2 with doppler target identification technology. Designed for integrating with Raymarine’s award winning Axiom®...
Simrad has now officially joined Furuno and Garmin with a solid-state radar feature using the Doppler effect to instantly highlight targets moving relative to your vessel. “VelocityTrack” can be added to any existing open array Halo radar with the purchase of an unlock code, and it appears to be the most sophisticated version of the feature yet. Simrad also created a thorough VelocityTrack presentation that even explains technical subtleties common to all such Doppler radar features. Meanwhile, Furuno is now challenging the Simrad and Garmin solid-state Doppler open arrays with its new DRS6A-NXT…
The Exposure OLAS Float-On is one hell of a flashlight (or “torch” in Brit speak). That’s because it’s also an automatic water-activated MOB strobe light and a Bluetooth MOB alerting device that can network with smartphone apps and more familiarly styled MOB tags. Details follow, along with several other interesting new safety products that also got the attention of the DAME Award judges at METS…
Given my accidental activation of an AIS MOB beacon a few weeks ago, it seemed like a good time to test beacons again. I hoped to at least see all the major brand multifunction displays properly react to an AIS MOB test transmission, putting up the distinct safety message that I should have seen during “the incident” and that every owner of an AIS MOB should be familiar with. Potential beacon users should also understand the specific activation, test, and deactivation controls on their device, plus I have two newer beacons with special features worth examining in detail…
The grins tell the story: Mission accomplished! Due to an obscure but noteworthy electrical glitch, plus oodles of embarrassingly distracted seamanship on my part, a sizable U.S. Coast Guard team spent part of a beautiful Saturday looking for an AIS man overboard alert that seemed to be associated with my boat Gizmo. Fireman Joey Jansen-Hedrick and Petty Officer 1st Class T.J. Iaci (above) were the boarding party that had to deal with an owner/operator (me) who was pretty sure they didn’t know what they were talking about. But they were politely persistent, and they were right…
Does it make sense to use smartphones and tablets for a man overboard alarm and recovery system? I can testify that the first reaction of Sail magazine’s Pittman Innovation Award judges was skepticism. Nonetheless we found PanPan’s CrewWatcher so well thought out and potentially so useful that we gave it an award in the safety category, and then an independent second set of judges picked it for the Overall Winner. And truth be told, the finished CrewWatcher personal beacons and apps don’t actually exist yet!
