The Marine Technology Hub
My PMY March column about the SPOT satellite messenger is now online, and you’ll see that I gave the company guff for what I thought was “hyped-up fear marketing.” But in fact they’ve toned that down quite a bit recently.
Who’s going to argue with that? I first noted MariTech’s use of the female form to sell the Virtual Lifeline wireless engine shut-off back in ‘05. These days they’ve switched body parts, but the system seems pretty similar, a good sign of effectiveness really. But it looks like they’ve got a serious new competitor in Autotether, which…
Friday’s entry may not have been clear; I only meant to snipe at the New York Times (lightly), and not at Spot. In fact, Spot was one of my four picks for the electronics section of Sail’s annual Freeman K. Pittman Innovation Awards, mentioned earlier with other M.E. awards and now out in the February issue (though sadly not on line)…
Alas, my fantasy life is not Clark Beek exhilarating. In fact you might deem it rather pathetic, like yesterday’s imaginary turn at the New York Times copy desk red-lining the bejezum out of a blurb about SPOT…
I may be annoyed at the FCC, but the U.S. Coast Guard never ceases to impress me. In this CG video, also viewable below, a chopper team…
Though my first SPOT test entry garnered no comments, I remain convinced that some boaters will go for this gadget/service once they fully understand what it can do for them…
Since Sunday I’ve been testing a SPOT—the Globalstar based “satellite messenger” first mentioned here in August—and I’m impressed…
Well, my entry on how Rendez-vous tender tracking uses AIS message conventions seems to have confused even some AIS savvy folks (sorry, Del). To be clear, Rendez-vous will not show up on anyone’s screen unless that screen is connected to a specific network of Rendez-vous radios. Rendez-vous just uses the AIS data structure so that plotting software does not have be modified to see the tenders in a network. Get it? I think it clever, but the folks who developed the Seetrac Tender Tracking systems aren’t so sure:
Tender tracking systems, like the Nobeltec/Seetrac combo discussed here last year, are a bit exotic (even a bit mockable). But I’ve seen the captain of a big charter yacht worry over a ditzy guest out on a PWC, plus I see how over-the-top some mega yacht tenders are getting (like the Vikal Limo). In fact, when I was in the British Virgin Islands last spring, it seemed like every big, really fine center console I saw turned out to be the “little” boat of something much bigger. In other words, tender tracking can be serious business, and I think the new SeaCas Rendez-vous system looks to be a powerful solution.
Rusty commented that the FCC may make GPS mandatory in a DSC-equipped handheld VHF, adding that he’d “rather spend $300 on a 5 watt marine portable with GPS location rather than buy one of these FRS ‘locators’ {TracMe}.” I agree completely, and even see considerable safety value in a DSC handheld without GPS. If, say,…
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