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Anything you'd like to tell us about navigation, navigational aids and related topics will be covered on this page.

If you have experience of using anything from a sextant to the latest state of the art device, and would like to share hints on the use of it with newcomers to the art, if  you've mastered a complex piece of modern technological navigation equipment and would like to let the rest of us into the secrets of it, we'd love to hear from you.

If you are not already familiar with the story of how John Harrison revolutionised navigation in the 1760's you may like to read all about it.

We would be interested to know which item of modern navigational equipment you'd choose, if any, should you be obliged to pick but one.  For us it's our trusty radar - we could manage without the GPS quite happily but the loss of the radar would be truly upsetting. The image shown here is of a part of Admiralty Bay, Bequia, showing the many yachts, and a few small ships, at anchor.

We were interested to find that many have found radar images hard to interpret, as we ourselves would have done, had it not been for the fact that a retired radar officer was kind enough to give the captain a crash course during a charter a few years ago ( he had never used the radar on board, dismissing the images as a blur of meaningless green blobs). 

The navigation officer aboard the SS Africa had, likewise, explained the meanings of the blobs to your Managing Editor some forty-odd years ago (it's true what they say about the ease with which children learn because they don't know it's supposed to be difficult!) during a voyage from Trieste in Italy to Mombasa in Kenya when she went visiting all the places passengers are not supposed to enter...

There is news, further down this page, for those who have not already heard it, of a new radar overlay program for electronic chart users - making the radar image come to life for the onlooker...it's all quite exciting, even to those of us who don't actually use the electronic equipment, the progress being made is still fascinating.

A discussion of GPS anomalies might be very interesting….including the most common anomaly, according to a few bemused people around a table in the bar, the other week...which had nothing to do with how the GPS functions, but everything to do with the fact that a lot of people have purchased boats and taken to cruising around in them with next to no navigational or other skills, because the advent of the GPS has made it possible for them to get around. 

This used to be no more than a topic of scathing comment amongst properly trained and/or experienced sailors.  Now it is becoming cause for genuine concern. Not the least of the dangers is the tendency of novice sailors to seek advice from publications and each other. 

Where a seasoned sailor will interpret any and all information received and use his skills to get around, a novice is more likely to adhere rigidly to whatever the 'experts' appear to be saying. With more and more vessels being motored at sea, (this being easier than actually sailing,) and many of them using the same 'waypoints' as one another, having read the same publications, the dangers of collision can surely only be increasing... 

What do you think? Have you had a close call, or even a collision as a result of this syndrome? We're interested in everything you have to say. 

NAVIGATION NOTICE BOARD

We'd like to hear from anyone currently using  navigation software, with a view to running an article about the programs available and readers' experiences with them in a future issue of MarineZine. If you have experience with using  navigational software as one of the aids you employ, we'd appreciate hearing from you. We are interested in hearing from seasoned navigators and novices alike.

We would also like to hear opinions on the cost of acquiring charts for these programs. Do you feel the charts that go with your software are fairly priced?

 We'll publish any answers here so that Kees can see them from wherever he finds himself...

Radar Overlay for Electronic Charting Display

You asked for it, Nobeltec appears to have done it...
You may have heard that Nobeltec was acquired by Jeppesen Sanderson a while back - this seems to have been a positive move and, as always, Nobeltec has been keeping busy, looking for, and usually finding, ways to keep their clients impressed and happy with the product range.

On every customer survey Nobeltec have done in recent years, the number one requested feature has been the ability to overlay a radar image on top of their electronic charting display. 
Three years of hard work culminated in the release of their radar overlay product--the RADARpc. 
If you are one of the many who thinks old-style (non-overlayed) radar displays are hard to interpret, the RADARpc may bring a surprised smile to your face. 

" With RADARpc, radar just became a lot more intuitive and user friendly." says Nobeltec's newsletter editor Tim Whelan.
The RADARpc plugs straight into a standard laptop or desktop PC using a PCMCIA card, USB port, or PCI card and features true radar overlay at around $2,600.00 for existing Visual Navigation Suite 5.0 customers. 

Full specifications on this product, including sample screen shots are available on their web site: http://www.nobeltec.com.  

For information on their Tides and Currents software you can log onto http://www.tides.com too.

If you are a user of RADARpc we'd love to hear what difference it has made to your relationship with your radar, if any, and whether you would recommend it to other navigators. 

Trimble's BD750 RTK GPS Card

Trimble, founded in 1978 and located in Sunnyvale, California, now hold more than 200 U.S. patents on GPS and related technology, with over 180 additional patents pending. 
Trimble brought out the BD750, a compact Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) Global Positioning System (GPS) card for machine and vessel positioning, guidance and control applications.

The card provides system integrators with the highest level of integration, accuracy and response from a dual-frequency GPS receiver. Its compact Eurocard form factor allows for easy integration with minimal demand on space. 

The BD750 is accurate and fast with centimeter-level positioning. Dynamic platforms, such as autonomous machinery, require virtually instantaneous position reports multiple times per second. It delivers positions to guidance or control loop software with an unprecedented latency of less than 20 milliseconds at 20 times per second.  This responsiveness is matched with horizontal accuracies of 2 centimeters and vertical accuracies of 3 centimeters. 

For even more precise applications, the BD750 provides horizontal accuracies of 1 centimeter at a 5 Hz rate with a small increase in latency. 
Interfacing and configuration is easy with the BD750. The card is designed to plug right into an application with minimal development. 
An easy-to-use application file interface enables the receiver to be completely programmed with a single command. 

The BD750 can also be configured by a Windows-based Configuration Toolbox and Remote Controller software. The card includes support for the industry-standard CAN (Controller Area Network) architecture. 
The BD750 uses the most advanced technology from Trimble. 

The accuracies, update rates and latencies are made possible through a GPS architecture specifically designed for demanding dynamic positioning applications. 

Custom-designed hardware with Super-trak signal technology and EVEREST multi-path rejection technology provide superior satellite tracking. 
The BD750 can receive both differential GPS corrections and Trimble's published Compact Measurement Record (CMR) differential data simultaneously. 
The card then chooses the optimum source for seamless navigation. 

The ability to calculate the baseline vector between two moving receivers to centimeter accuracy is available as an option which provides robust heading on a moving platform or reliable separation between two dynamic vehicles. 
We believe the BD750  to have been available, through Trimble's worldwide dealer network, for around a year now.

Are you, or is anyone you know, using this system? Are you a supplier with good reports from clients on this equipment? We'd love to hear comments from anyone in a position to make them.