Class B AIS transponder for $500, maybe
So goes the headline in the Nov. issue of Digital Ship (click on link in “Navigation” section, and thanks, Raye), but there’s something odd about this otherwise very intriguing proposition. For one thing, SRT’s business development manager doesn’t seem to think that Class B transponders will make boating safer:
“Using Class B as an anti-collision device does not make a large amount of sense, he points out - ship owners can see if they are about to hit something much easier by using their eyes than by trying to make sense of a screen with 1,000 vessels on it. ‘The vessels will look like snow on the screen,’ he says. ‘Its not going to have any practical use.’”
Perhaps I’m just in a skeptical mood, but I wasn’t surprised to learn at SRT’s site that’s it’s just become a publicly traded company.
I agree having 100's of recreational vessels transmitting on B is just going to make for a very cluttered screen. Commercial traffic is not going to be paying much attention to it.
The better solution is to have an AIS A receiver and good software to show where the commercial traffic is.
That being said both GPSNavX and MacENC will support AIS B.