So Sail Editor Peter Nielsen sends me this shot wondering who makes that articulated stalky thing holding up the B&G autopilot, and where he can get some for his boat. I have no idea, and I’m interested too. Can anyone fill us in? Of course I asked Peter where he’d seen it, and damned if he hasn’t been out goofing around Boston Harbor with Loïck Peyron, the offshore racing demi-god I mentioned yesterday. And he kindly sent along the shot below of Gitana Eighty’s nav station.
Sometimes you-know-who works in mysterious ways. On Saturday afternoon I watched a long-time friend, Tom Amory, set sail for Finland with his daughter and her friend, but without the Simrad AI50 Class B AIS transponder he’d tried so hard to obtain. I was excited for him, but also yet further ripped at the FCC. Tom ordered the unit from a Canadian distributor who agreed to ship it to the U.S. for use in international waters, but insisted on putting its true identity on the customs form. It got turned back at the border! Then Tom employed an alternative importation technique, which didn’t work in time. Note to the FCC commissioners: What the hell are you doing, making an upright citizen smuggle in a U.S. Coast Guard approved safety tool that he can legally use about 3,988 miles of his 4,000 mile voyage?!?!
While evidence of unusual EPIRB failure activity remains scarce, who doesn’t like the idea of testing their own, as often and as thoroughly as possible? So I always try to note what a new model’s self-test abilities are (though I didn’t have much detail on these GME PLBs just coming to the States). But even the best self-testing is surely limited. There are also professional test receivers—like Musson Marine’s and the WS Tech BT100 PDA-hosted systems—which measure real over-the-air 406/121.5 MHz transmissions, but I don’t know how available that service is to regular boaters. Anyone? Both GME and WS Tech, by the way, are distributed in the U.S. by EPIRB/PLB expert George Lariviere and his Whiffletree Corp.
Well, if I’m going to post on Memorial Day, I guess a war sub-text is appropriate. You see, Rob Stormer got very upset about what I thought was a polite, if argumentative, commentary on his EPIRB failure “investigation”. His displeasure is pretty vivid in the rebuttal he posted today, but you should have heard him yell at me over the phone on Friday! Now normally I avoid such combat, but I can dish it out, and it seems worthwhile in this case because illuminating Stormer’s ongoing errors does shed some light on this important safety subject. Two glaring examples from his rebuttal:
Geez, I was just getting used to the idea that Garmin really would buy Raymarine—lots of industry people seemed to think it would happen—but apparently now it’s off. Or maybe this is one of those Yahoo/Microsoft dances? I have absolutely no idea. But I am going to Portsmouth, England, in two weeks to join a British Marine Federation press tour (with quite the international cast of scribes, I just noticed), and I’m hoping that I can visit Raymarine’s R&D center before the tour. I’d be content just to see the operation, but who knows what I might find out?
Is there a problem with EPIRBs? Robin Storm thinks so, and is even calling for a congressional investigation into what he perceives as an alarming number of failures and a flawed failure investigation system. But I read his whole report and, at the risk of sounding cranky, must ask: “Where’s the meat?” There are several supposed failures cited, none of which seem clearly the fault of the EPIRB itself or the COSPAS-SARSAT system:
Preston Calvert is one of several valuable contributors to the HD radar discussion, which is how I got e-mailing with him last night. Which is how I confirmed that he is indeed the same Preston whose Riviera 45 was tested in PMY recently, except his Neuromancer3 is better looking, and a lot more geeked out, than the boat they used in the main photo shoot. It also turns out that Preston is a new user of SeaKey v2, and he kindly gave me “guest” access to his account there. I’m pretty impressed with the service he’s getting, but will turn it over to Preston:
Doh! There’s a pall of embarrassment hanging over Panbo HQ today. When I first reviewed the new Raymarine software and Platinum+ charts, I complained that I couldn’t see the live tide and current icons that were an announced feature. None appeared after the “real” reset either, and so I complained to Raymarine. Well, gosh, they were right under my nose: select any regular tide or current icon on a chart, hit OK, and—ta! ta!—there’s a new “Animate” soft key choice. Which gets you to the very able screen above, full size here. Every station in view animates either automatically or step-by-step at an interval you choose, and you can zoom and pan at will. Nice! (By the way, I used the Fish’N Chip chart here because it seemed cleaner-looking at this zoom level, interesting data too.)
I have a gripe about High Definition radar, or Ultra HD or Super HD or whatever; as best I can tell there is no identifiable technology, specs, or benchmarks to compare one with another, or even to grasp what it is. But it definitely is something. I’ve seen screen shots of Northstar/Simrad HD that looked good, I’ve heard excellent reports on Garmin’s HD and Raymarine’s, which I also saw myself, though only in tight quarters and flat water. But last week I spent nearly six hours inshore and off with a Furuno UHD 4kW 3.5’ array, and…wowsuh, I was definitely, and highly, impressed.
After I’d written my first impressions of the new E-Series 4.29 software and the Platinum+ charts it supports, I learned that I hadn’t done the “real” version of the recommended factory/master reset. You see, though Raymarine’s own FAQ is unclear about it, a reset done by powering up while holding down the leftmost soft key is apparently different, and deeper, than the one I’d done from the System Setup menu. I know for sure that this is true, as after a “real” reset yesterday, some of the problems I’d seen went away. For instance, I can pull up the System Diagnostics SeaTalkNG sub-menus now without causing a reset, though the device list there remains strangely empty (the new manual says it’s “for diagnostic use by authorized dealers” anyway). Much more important is how the test E seems be performing even quicker and looking better than what I’d noticed the first time around.
This morning the Sunday Telegraph is reporting (link dicey, here’s alternate) that Garmin is the mystery bidder known to have approached Raymarine in late February. I’m fairly surprised, but what do I know! It seems to me that Garmin is competing well against Raymarine, at least on the lower side of the market (while Furuno comes on strong, particularly on the high side and if it can get product out the door). But it’s also obvious that Garmin is making a big play for the dealer/installer and boat builder business that it’s never done well with, but where Raymarine excels. On the other hand, don’t the Garmin and Raymarine product lines overlap a great deal? Or am I seeing the trees, not the forest? And what would this buyout mean for us consumers; might Garmin eventually dominate marine electronics to a detrimental degree? But note that even if this report—based on “sources close to the deal”—is true, it is not a done deal, and the Telegraph adds that “A number of private equity companies are also thought to be eyeing Raymarine.” Ray has its annual meeting this coming Friday, and maybe we’ll all know more after that. Your thoughts?
The electronics road trip was a blast, and it seemed appropriate that I drove it with three (3!) modes of satellite communications on my dash board, bigger image here.
A guy’s got to ham it up once in a while! But, truly, trying NavNet 3D on the water today had me grinning. I spent hours with that MFD8 because it and its MFD12 mate have become one of the mysteries of this system. Are they as sensationally fast and smooth as the big expensive Black Box version many have been blown away by at boat shows? I threw everything I could at it—UHD radar (very impressive) overlay, hi res photo overlay, dual radar ranges, Sirius weather overlay, ARPA and AIS targets, and mucho zooming, panning, and 2D/3D flipping—and we were often doing over 20 knots and sometimes going in circles. Verdict: no, it’s not as knock-your-socks-off fast as the BB, but it is quite fast, very powerful, and elegant to use. Furuno and MaxSea have created not just a remarkable navigation system, but one that scales easily from center console to megayacht. Sailboats too. More to come, of course.
Yeeeeha…today I’m driving down to Cape Cod so that on Thursday I can ride on Furuno’s test boat equipped with the geekalicious NN3D network of gear shown above, and bigger here. Hosting the demo will be Brice Pryszo, founder of MaxSea, and his son Iker, who now works at Furuno USA headquarters. I’ll be Spot sharing, taking pictures, pushing buttons, and asking questions. And I’m open to suggestions about just what to ask and look for.
Simrad’s AT10, mentioned a while back, is a small and inexpensive utility device that translates certain NMEA 0183 messages into NMEA 2000, and vice versa. If you go to Simrad’s manual download site and use the keyword “AT10”, you’ll find a list of 0183 sentences it purportedly understands (but you may have to add a “pdf” extension to open the file). I was hoping to use an AT10 along with good old Nema Talker to simulate basic data on my test network. And as you can see in the N2K Analyzer screen above, bigger here, it works.
I’ve been bench testing Raymarine’s E-Series V4 software update (aka 4.29) for a while now, mostly with a variety of new Navionics Platinum+ cards I borrowed. If you’ve read the comments to that V4 post, you’ll know that some upgraders have had to revert to 3.31, and I’m not surprised. There’s lots of changes in 4.29, and even my relatively unstressed test E-120—just a bit of N2K input; nothing attached via standard SeaTalk, SThs, or NMEA 0183 right now—goes a little twitchy sometimes. Like suddenly the 3D rotary controls don’t work unless I do a reset. And it invariably resets when I try to query the new STng (N2K) diagnostic screen, no matter what’s on the backbone. Plus I’ve yet to see P+’s live tide/current icons or the now built-in Fish’N Chip bathy data, despite another 4.29 flash and master reset (apparently Raymarine and Navionics are working on that latter one). However, I’d certainly recommend updating; just be prepared to go back to 3.31 if needed, and be on the lookout for the update to the update surely in the works.
Panbo commenters don’t seem very interested in Spot sharing, but I think it’s a cool deal for long range cruisers like Milt and Judy Baker, not to mention working mariners like Capt. Richard Rodriguez. Note how the Baker’s custom message is displayed next to their anchorage on the French Riviera, above and bigger here . And today I notice that Mad Mariner apparently has arranged with West Marine for an extra special Spot deal ($132), and that West customer product reviews are all five star. Even the SSCA offshore guys are taking a cautious look at it
I was pleased to find this fine set of gauge configuration options on the Maretron DSM250. Note how you can set the RPM dial’s range, tick marks, and warning colors. Nice! Note too the live demo of the gauge you’re building (there are RPMs and other engine PGNs on the Panbo network now, thanks to a Lowrance simulator). Display customization is one reason why virtual gauges can be superior to real ones, but so far few of the N2K instruments I’m testing take much advantage of the possibilities. You can’t even set the range on either the GMI 10 or ST70 speed dials, which means you’ll constantly be reminded of how fast you can’t go. And, good as the DSM250 is, it doesn’t even have a speed gauge yet, or a depth graph.
It’s been a while since Jeppesen bought C-Map, and even longer since the 9.0 version of NNS (Nobeltec Navigation Software) came out. But the new versions of VNS and Admiral are now shipping, and looking good too (big Admiral screen here). Of course, the major change is that the programs now support C-Map MAX Pro cartography, which is why they’re called MAX Pro and not version 10. Besides a world portfolio of some 30,000 charts—versus Passport’s 10,000–another bit of nice news is that everyone who currently owns NSS 9 gets a free upgrade to Max Pro, and a free MAX Pro chart region for every Passport region owned, and a free copy of the new Raster Plus Pack. (Owners of earlier NSS versions get various deals, depending, as explained in the press releases.)
Last winter, thanks to Lee Guite of East Boothbay, I tried some LED bulbs Lee used to replace the incandescent ones in the Aqua Signal nav lights aboard his Dulcinea. Lee got pretty carried away researching available replacement bulbs and the ones he finally chose were “flux” models from the LED Shop in Australia. In the photo above I was trying to get a camera comparison of his steaming light versus an OGM combo LED running light. They both seemed fairly effective, but now the LED Shop has more powerful SMT bulbs, and Orca Green Marine has dropped the multi-LED models altogether in favor of single LED lights. I don’t know much about LEDs, but they do seem to be in a state of rapid technological change, which means that one LED may perform quite differently than another, and none of them may be what we’ll be using a few years hence.
Check the bigger image; is that not a pretty sweet install, even if I do say so myself? There’s also some interesting screen detail here, like the handsome water temperature graph the GMI 10 can put up. Just behind its Menu button are choices of range and time. But the Garmin does not yet do a depth graph like the ones seen on the IS20 Graphic and ST70. On the latter you can change time ranges from 1 minute to 24 hours with just the left/right buttons, which is cool, but wouldn’t it be nice if Raymarine put the current depth in bold font in that white space upper right? The Simrad graph covers a few minutes and has no controls, but I do like that icon reminding you that the depth is being measured from the keel. All screens, by the way, are at max brightness, except the Garmin, which is at 60%. Next week we’ll see how they look in direct and filtered sunlight. Now here’s a question: if you were photographing these for a powerboat and fishing magazine, what screens would you use?
Can Panbo reader Rolf network the NavNet 3D version of MaxSea Time Zero straight to NN3D radar and GPS compass aboard his Regina 43 (as he graphically dreamed of above)? The idea seems conceivable given that NN3D radar scanners are independent Ethernet entities, and can even bridge in NMEA 2000 sensors, but I’ve confirmed from Furuno that you must have at least one of its NN3D processors in the system. That’s because only a Furuno MFD or Black Box can be the Master of a network, able to “act as a DHCP server and distribute IP address to any other Ethernet device (Radar Antenna, Sounder, Computer, ...).” MaxSea Time Zero is going to work nicely in an NN3D network, sharing charts and all sensor data, but it can only be a “slave” in terms of network architecture (and it also won’t be able to do some configuration tasks like aligning a scanner).
