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…