Turkey is mandating some 25,000 commercial vessels to carry the unusual Class B AIS transponders seen above, which function like conventional ones but with some special added features. Note the extra SRM message buttons which should help nearby boats and SAR authorities to react quickly to collisions, fires, etc. Also built into these units is a tracking scheme such that the Turkish government can identify vessels trying to avoid taxes by buying fuel elsewhere! Not only are safety, security, and even revenues driving a rapid increase in AIS mandates, but some amazing new AIS technology is just around the corner. I learned a lot during a recent lunch with a man who may well know more about the worldwide state of AIS than any other...
Just yesterday, in my blogging birthday post, I commented on Panbo's international reach, and today I've got some interesting evidence (and more tomorrow). That shot of the new Garmin 700 series above was recently sent to me by Petar Maksimovic of Info Team, Garmin's Serbian dealer. And there's more of interest on that screen than just the language. Info Team has been working for nearly a decade to create Serbian road and waterway maps under Garmin's MPC system, and says that its latest SCG RoadMap includes official Plovput data for about 1,600 kilometers of rivers and canals. Apparently that effort was not only an innovation for inland Europe, but also helped Info Team create a market for marine electronics. In fact, the company demonstrated some gear at the recent Belgrade Boat Show that may not have been seen right here in the world's largest ME market yet, as Petar explains...
Click above for a readable image, and see how blithely an anonymous Sailing Anarchy poster spread AIS misinformation, reinforcing a myth that threatens to curtail adoption of Class B transponders. After first establishing himself as a sailor who uses an AIS receiver, he writes knowingly (but ignorantly) about specific AIS requirements around the world. And then comes the doozy: "My recollection is that AIS Class A transceivers fitted to commercial
vessels have a big red IGNORE CLASS B Transceivers button to declutter
their displays and concentrate on avoiding vessels that will do more
than smudge their paint in a collision". That's unadulterated BS on all counts -- the big red button DOES NOT EXIST, the watch standers who don't care about small vessels are rare, and this blowhard has probably never seen a ship's bridge to "recollect" -- but the myth continues to spread...
I've been wondering what happened to the Coast Guard's plan to require AIS on lots more commercial vessels plying U.S. waters, first discussed here in December '08. Unfortunately the legalese around federal rulemaking means that the normally very informative Jorge Arroyo -- project manager in the CG's Office of Navigation Systems -- can only say that the comments collected in early 2009 are being analyzed. I hope the Final Rule comes out soon, because looking at that slide above I see that compliance after the rule will take about half a year and, man-o-man, I'd like see those particular 17,442 vessels transmitting AIS ASAP...
I once heard a gentleman who probably knew what he was talking about complain fairly bitterly about the electronic radar reflectors called SARTs. He said they'd been pushed on the GMDSS by a member nation where they were made and that they'd never proven themselves effective in search and rescue operations. Which is just one reason why the new Jotron AIS SART is an interesting development...
When we got excited about the Standard Horizon GX2100 AISrx/VHF (now well documented at SH), did anyone realize that the already versatile CMP30 RAM3 remote station would also show the targets? Well, there it was in Miami, looking pretty much like the photo above. And GX2100 love hasn't waned; the set was one of West Marine's show highlightsand it won the NMMA Innovation Award in the Electronics category. Of course there was plenty more going on in the AIS department...
Today Garmin announced the $500 AIS 300, the first receiver to output NMEA 2000 as well as 0183. Which means that if you're in Miami like I am, you can not only check out Garmin's new GPSMap 700 series, and the new top-of-line 6- and 7000 series, but what's also becoming quite the line-up of VHF and AIS choices. Oh, plus HomePort and N2K/analog adaptors; is Garmin on a roll or what? Actually the show doors open tomorrow, but today there are demo cruises with Sirius/XM Satellite Weather (most of the companies who use their receivers will be aboard) and with FLIR (which is getting to be a tradition). I also mooched onto a small Humminbird demo with my Bonnier colleagues Chris Woodward and Glenn Law. Hell of day! I may not even be able to Twitter much due to those trips and other reasons, but weren't you planning to do the Panbo marine electronics poll anyway?
The tidal wave of interesting iPhone boating apps rolls on! The screen at left above (click for bigger) shows a beta version of Memory Map's upcoming charting app and I can tell you that it already handles NOAA raster charts and topo maps with speed and smoothness I didn't think possible on plain 3G hardware. At middle is the brand new Ships Ahoy!, a $3 AR (augmented reality) relative to Ship Finder and the other AIS viewers that lets you just point an iPhone 3Gs (you need the compass) toward a vessel or two to get their names and details (if the area is covered by a network receiver). And finally there's Navionics' neat new Ski:US, which admittedly has nothing to do with boats but does speak to this big marine company's big commitment to mobile apps. It happens to have my local Camden Snow Bowl among the so-far-limited ski area coverage, and it works great. In that screen shot I'm playing back the tracks (in yellow) I cut right after last week's big snow dump, in particular the --- MPH moment I lost board control in a huge drift. All these possibilities, and lord knows what else, will expand if Apple introduces a 4.0 version of the iPhone operating system this afternoon. But of course the bigger questions swirl around the Apple tablet, or whatever they decide to call it...
As noted recently Digital Yacht is on a new product roll. To my knowledge this SmarterChart SC500A is the first new C-Map plotter in quite a while, and the first plotter to have a built-in AIS receiver period . At $799 list, it might be just the thing for open helms on some smaller boats, for which DY also has a new line of helm pods (though they don't seem to be online yet). But some bigger boats might want one of these to serve mainly as an AIS target plotter (it has NMEA 0183 output too), and there are a couple of other interesting developements in that department...
Why were nearly 100 megayachts anchored off St. Bart's last night, instead of cuddling up in lovely Gustavia for the New Year's Eve party? Well, apparently it was quite rough down there, and even the vessels that had already made it into the inner harbor were asked to leave because of the swell. Which must have made for a hellacious scene...
