Monthly Archive: April 2008

SPOT share pages, in beta 0

SPOT share pages, in beta

Spot_sharing_example_cPanbo

The SPOT satellite messenger is about to get more attractive to many boaters. Originally it wasn’t all that easy to share your tracking with friends and family; in fact, to do so you had to share your entire Spot account user name and password. But now Spot is beta testing a pretty sophisticated feature that enables Web sharing of both tracks and messages…

Vesper AIS WatchMate, smart details 19

Vesper AIS WatchMate, smart details

Vesper_AIS_WatchMate

Milltech Marine is carrying a new AIS display of particular interest to power-sensitive offshore sailors. The Vesper Marine AIS WatchMate has a 5–inch “daylight readable” screen but purportedly only draws 1.2 watts average, 2.5 max. The $499 unit is not a receiver and does not do graphic target plotting, but…

AIS, this ‘n’ that #7 14

AIS, this ‘n’ that #7

Daily_U.S._AIS_targets

I haven’t done one of these AIS miscellaneous entries since last June, but even then was wondering why the FCC hadn’t yet approved Class B! Now it seems like the U.S. marine safety community has gone into a state of depression about it…

NMEA 2000 instruments, ready to rock 33

NMEA 2000 instruments, ready to rock

NMEA_2000_instruments_lr_cPanbo

So I may be on semi vacation, and having a time, but I’m still looking forward to getting back to the lab where the network of NMEA instruments recently grew to include Furuno’s and Simrad’s latest. Check out the big picture here. I’ll be writing a comparative overview on these five brands soon after I get back, and I’m trying to sort out factors to check out. So far I’ve got: