Standard Horizon CPV350, a super combo?
Are you old enough to remember Superman on TV? “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!!!” That’s what came up in my fuddled brain when first presented with Standard’s first-of-its-kind what-the-heck-is-that? VHF and chart plotter combo machine. If you look close, the screen above is an obvious dummy, but I saw the unit running in Miami and was impressed. That screen is a 7” wide style—hi res (800 x 480 pixels) and hi bright. The CVP fully supports C-Map Max and its interface looked quite polished up compared to the old CP series (which wasn’t bad). The radio is full Class D DSC with a 30 watt hailer/horn built in, and you can add two RAM+ or telephone style mics if desired. You can also hang a black box fishfinder on this ($1,100 MAP priced) thing, making it quite the all-in-one for, say, a center console fishing machine or a tuna tower, or a sailboat helm. The designed-in ‘handle’ on the right side might be useful in those places too. Of course all the DSC benefits of interfacing GPS/plotter and VHF come built-in, just add an MMSI to get position with distress call, plot your buddies, etc. By the way, that area of marine communications is about to get a boost as Sea Tow rolls out an interesting new marine operator service called Sea Smart. More on that in few weeks.
Wouldn't AIS, both send and receive, be easy to do on such a device? I was hoping for a handheld such as the Uniden Mystic to add AIS functionality. Maybe a built-in device would be good too.