AIS targets on a PDA?, yes indeed!
It makes more sense than you might think! That’s because so few plotters can yet display AIS targets, and a PC that can is often down below, too far from the helm for effective...
Panbo News and Reviews
Ben’s big submarine adventure
So I was excited just to get aboard the USS Salt Lake City; I can barely imagine what it was like for the 125 guys (+/-) who just cruised this technological marvel from San Diego, CA, to Portsmouth, NH, via the North...
COTS yes, Garmin on a Sub
I knew the Navy used some regular marine electronics and even has an appropriate acronym—COTS, for Commercial Off The Shelf—but I was still amazed to see a Garmin 2006 tucked amongst the massive jumble of gear in the...
FreeNavCharts.com, hype alert!
Oy, while I’m sleeping, a comments war breaks out over cheap charts (here and here). The main issue seems to be whether or not Maptech and NOAA’s free download sites are offering the same sets of raster charts, and...
Computer charting this and that, #1
* Panbo reader Dan Hinckley has put together a thorough and useful review of his experience running both GPSNavX and MacENC on a Mac mini, which is where the screen shot above came from. * A couple of...
Clean my screen, seriously
I don’t know anything about OptiMax, right, except that it popped up in our Google Ads when I wrote about touch screens. But I’m curious because I think screen cleaning is a serious subject! Last fall, when...
Northstar 8000i, the touch screen
Touch screen does seem like “the natural interface” (as I just read at some promotional site), but there are two gripes about using it on the water: one, the technology can reduce precious screen brightness 10–20%, and, two,...
Northstar 8000i, the architecture
The 8000i has a lot of sizzle, and some interesting new charts, but let’s start coverage with a system overview (bigger here): * The sunlight viewable multifunction displays are Windows PCs; the 12” is self...
The first chart plotter, 1985 & Italian
C-Map owns this ‘historic’ machine, which is supposedly the first chart plotter (bigger here) ever sold in the U.S. That was around 1985, when Navionics founders Giuseppe Carnevali and Fosco Bianchetti developed the first crude...
USCGC “Smackinaw”, ultra electronics gone awry
Let me say right off that I’m a big fan of the U.S. Coast Guard. But they do screw up sometimes. The latest was doozy. A couple of weeks ago the brand new cutter...
