KVH MSN wireless broadband, for boats, in Miami
The Miami Boat Show is next week and the new product teasers are coming in fast and furious. How about a KVH cellular modem combined with MSN TV, which is an Internet appliance and portal...
Panbo News and Reviews
The $100 tablet ECS, an eBay marvel
You’ve gotta admire John Williams’ keep-the-costs-down / keep-the-battery-full / let’s-go-sailing philosophy. The pride of his nav station (bigger here) is this antique (Windows 95), 12v sipping, pen computer (eBay, $50) which has a Holux PCMCIA GPS card (eBay,...
Panbo rocks!, and makes a tiny difference
Geez, yesterday’s request brought in some wonderful feedback about charting programs, not to mention some good material for future Panbo entries and even a candidate for my Helm Shot column (if he’s not too shy). This blog is helping...
ECS roundup, your suggestions please!
I was so wet behind the ears! One my first attempts at magazine writing was an overview of Electronic Charting Systems (ECS) for the Sept/Oct 1999 issue of Ocean Navigator. I spent months doing the research,...
C-Map lighthouse, not as bad as it seemed
NavSim sent me a screenshot (above, and full size here ) from its latest BoatCruiser software, which now supports C-Map Max charts…and there—unlike the shot I put up yesterday—is the Curtis Island light. That got me...
“Obstructions that cover”, there’s more
Geez, I’ve got companies (and individuals) sending me screenshots to prove that their charts show the rocks in my harbor! That’s Garmin BlueChart on a PC above. You’ll notice it’s based on the 1:20,000 harbor chart,...
Free Furuno, you could get a makeover!
You’d think I’d know more about this than I actually do! Apparently Voyaging Magazine—for which I write a column called Helm Shot (only the first one is online, unfortunately)—is running a ‘makeover’ style contest in which...
“Obstructions that cover”, the plot thickens
Panbo friend Jeffrey Siegel sent over an excellent example of how important those chart asterisks can be. His raster chart clip above “shows a very nasty rock just outside Castine that is exposed by two feet at...
Lowrance NauticPath, the rock problem
I’ve done more testing of the Lowrance ExplorerC handheld, and still like it a lot, but there are some real issues with the NauticPath charts. The main one is the absence of “obstructions that sometimes cover/uncover”, i.e. the...
Simrad buys Lowrance, very, very interesting
Weird! I was just writing an entry giving Lowrance some grief about their NauticPath charts, when a stock trading friend of mine called. “What the hell is going on with Lowrance?” says he (as...
