When I wrote about last year’s most innovative marine electronics a while back, I said I’d deal with the NMEA Awards separately. Well, here goes. But do understand that these awards are determined by mail-in votes from NMEA dealer and trade members and, while I don’t know for sure what the criteria are, I’d say that they’re more about performance and reliability than innovation. I’d guess there’s also a natural bias toward the sort of bigger gear that dealer/installers tend to work with, and probably also toward the brands that have particularly well developed dealer networks. “Best of Show” is a little different, however, as it’s voted on by everyone who attends the NMEA conference (mutts like me excepted).
All the well-informed feedback I’m getting to my marine electronics maintenance query reminded that a fellow named Joseph Howard wrote last week about the NMEA 2000 hobby project he’s pursuing, and also documenting over the MarinetteBoat forums. “It will be a ARM7 based fuel gauge reading PGN 127505 using Luminary Micro's LM3S8962 evaluation board, 89 bucks from Digi-Key. I am hand coding the stack extensions for address claims. (Wish I'd used a PIC 18 CanBus as they have a free J1939 stack). Quite a bit of C coding.”
So I’ve begun work on a magazine piece about how to include electronics in your Spring maintenance and commissioning routine. The following are some topics I’ve come up so far. I’d really appreciate your professional or do-it-yourself comments on these or any topics I missed:
Those of you not in the marine electronics trade—or the motley press corp that covers it—please avert your eyes. Seeing as the idea worked out pretty well for the Fort Lauderdale Show, I’ve put together a tentative schedule of Miami Boat Show press events. As before, I’m willing to add appropriate events—or modify existing ones—right up until the big show begins. And, whoa, it’s going to be a busy week for me. Besides the normal electronics mania, this year I’ll be one of the judges for NMMA’s Innovation Awards, and am also going to join a panel on new media at the Boating Writers International breakfast. See you there?
Lowrance’s Broadband Sonar was announced back in July, but—judging from the chatter on forums like BassBoat Central, BassPro Shops, and the Hull Truth—it’s just now getting to market. So there aren’t yet many consumer reports about its performance yet, but, man-o-man, the folks at Lowrance and mother company Navico are some excited about it. At METS CEO Jens-Thomas Pietralla called it “a fine piece of disruptive technology,” by which I think he meant that it has the combined performance and value to upset the whole world of fishfinding. His claim echoed (so to speak) an excited Lowrance rep I spoken with at the Fort Lauderdale Show.
Last week we saw how a GPS misused could cause a fiery frig up, but can giant fiery explosions on the Sun frig up the whole GPS system? I first heard about this thanks to a small article in the February issue of Soundings. It’s not online, but the research and incidents it discusses are. The phenomenon of flare-induced radio wave bursts interfering with relatively weak GPS signals was perhaps first observed in Sept. 2005, as reported by two Cornell U. researchers a year later. Shortly thereafter—on Dec. 5, 2006–the huge flare seen above caused a burst powerful enough to “swamp GPS receivers over the entire sunlit side of Earth” the next day, according to a scientist quoted by NOAA magazine. Now, it’s not clear to me how many civilians suffered noticeable GPS glitches on that day, or for how long, but I can tell that I first had my ear bent about the need for a secondary electronic positioning system back 2001, which led to this PMY column. The obvious choice seems to be Loran, but apparently our government is still thinking about it. (Let’s hope Class B AIS approval doesn’t take so long!) At any rate, when headed out to sea you might want to check space weather as well as the ocean variety, and of course don’t rely on any one stream of nav data.
I guess we can thank poor Bo Bai for reminding us to never, ever bury our heads completely into navigational gadgetry. Bai was headed to the Saw Mill River Parkway in Bedford Hills, NY, but according to a railroad spokesman, “As the car is driving over the tracks, the GPS system tells him to turn right, and he turns right onto the railroad tracks,” adding “he tried to stop the train by waving his arms, which apparently was not totally effective.”
Above is the odd little Smart Radio SR261 “AIS Modem”, which claims “most of the functions of a class A ais transponder with a fraction of costs.” Let me say right up front that I absolutely do not recommend using this device, and think it may even endanger the AI system. Let me also note that the Chinese manufacturer, Smart Radio (SR), has nothing to do with similar-sounding Software Radio Technology (SRT), the British firm that builds all the circuit boards in the legitimate Class B transponders currently waiting an FCC waiver (take action!). And while Smart Radio is the manufacturer of the SR161 and 162 AIS receivers, I have heard nothing but praise for those units and particularly for the main U.S. distributor Milltech Marine.
I’m sorry to report that the state of FCC approval for Class B AIS may be even worse than reported last month. Today an industry source told me that even though all the Commissioners have been briefed on the Amendment and none expressed reservations, or even asked questions, it has somehow gone onto what’s known internally as the “wait and see list.” Apparently the only force that might move it along is encouragement from concerned citizens like us. So here’s my draft email to the Commissioners:
I’ve been looking forward to the two VHF/GPS/DSC handhelds I heard about last Fall, but was a bit surprised to find this Standard Horizon HX850S in a magazine and also available for preorders at Landfall (Standard is great at making radios, but press releases …not so much). The 850S looks very capable if maybe a bit clunky. The built-in 12 channel GPS is not only used for a full set of DSC functions but is also output, along with DSC messages, via a NMEA 0183 cable from the radio’s cradle.
