It's a lousy photo (even clicked larger), but amazing once you understand it. Notice the piling somewhat hidden behind Navico Broadband Radar engineer Don Korte and right off the bow of yesterday's demo boat. Then check out the screen of the Lowrance HDS 10 slightly obscured by my new colleague Chris Woodward (who writes for Sport Fishing). It's delivering a clean target plot of the piling less than 30' from the 18" scanner dome! I saw this sort of extraordinary near-range performance all over Biscayne Bay yesterday. The little scanner easily resolved a quarter mile string of channel pilings like this one, and all the boats using the channel, and it separated a 40' sailboat close to a low shore over a half mile away. And that was all in complete auto mode; with a little tweaking we could sometimes see crab pot buoys like the one lower left in the photo, or gulls sitting on calm water.
Many readers have commented on my Sailing with an Airmar PB200 entry. I enjoyed reading and responding to comments, and offer this diagram in response to some questions about mounting the PB200. The diagram above (click to enlarge) shows the parts unassembled, and then assembled on the masthead, along with an alternate "Plan B" my yard came up with before installation in the event my masthead was too crowded. (Credits to Jeff Willis at Willis Marine in Huntington, NY.)
There's an old thread at rec.boats.electronics on how to best install a plotter in an open cockpit so it can be easily removed. Sandy offered the interesting suggestion of using "finger cots" to protect the loose power and data plugs when the unit is put away. Finger cots? Well, hopefully I'm not completely naive, and some of you don't know what they are either? They are used extensively in electronics manufacturing, as seen above, and have other quite different uses, as discussed in Wikipedia. At any rate, finger cots seem handy for protecting plugs and handling circuit boards--and who knows what else--and they can even be found on Amazon.
While these screenshots (click'em for full size) are spectacular examples of what Maretron's new system monitors can do, they are also a bit deceptive. That's because the underlying sensor technology can scale to much more modest yachts, which don't need a PC monitoring program like N2KView to use it. For instance the RIM100, or Run Indicator Module, is a little black box that can watch up to six AC or DC circuits, like the nav lights above, and report whether current is running through them, via standard NMEA 2000 messages...
Aha, a worthy electronics-oriented blog I forgot in my "Resources" update (now fixed) is Tom Tripp's OceanLines. Check out this week's interesting project: Tom, who also blogs for MadMariner, got several major manufacturers to work up electronics packages for the new Kadey-Krogen 55. Here are detailed suggestions from Garmin, Furuno, and Raymarine. I'd be curious what an independent dealer/installer might suggest, particularly in terms of a more PC-based system, and what you all might do with that huge helm above (and a budget to match)?
OK, it's not NMEA 2000, not color, and not touchscreen--kinda homely really--but I'm liking the new Blue Sea DC/AC/tank/bilge monitor. Actually I'm a long-time Blue Sea fan; my experience with their electrical products is that they're well designed, and well made for the money, and that the various collaterals--brochures, manuals, and Web site--are all nicely done and highly informative. The same seems true of the company's first venture from electrical to electronic...
PB200 with VHF extension pole for mounting atop a masthead
I am writing to share my excitement about a new product from Airmar, tested aboard my 39 foot sailboat this past October-November. The Airmar PB200 is a compact masthead sensor that includes an ultrasonic (no moving parts) wind sensor, solid state compass, GPS receiver and more, along with a 3-axis accelerometer. It has an NMEA-0183 output that I found compatible with my Raymarine instrument suite. Airmar doesn't market this for use on a sailboat, but when I learned about the new version of this powerboat product, I got excited about the potential to make my autopilot much more useful when sailing short-handed. Thanks in part to Panbo, I got the opportunity to evaluate a beta version on my own sailboat...
I've had impressive results with the Tacktick Micronet system on the Annie G., but the gear is expensive. Good then that Tacktick has introduced an economy version of the T101 wind system, called the mn30 and/or T033 (click on photo above for larger version). The nifty solar-powered, wireless masthead sensor is the same, but the display is powered from a boat's 12v supply instead of solar cells. Which seems like a reasonable trade for a discount of over $400 retail, and might even be preferable on boats where the display doesn't get sufficient sunlight. Actually, there may be some other features missing from the mn30/T033 that I haven't found yet. But I do know that it supports basic calibration like offset and speed %, and can integrate with a Micronet wireless speedo or NMEA box (& GPS) for True Wind readings. Here's the manual PDF and U.S. distributor Ocean Equipment's listing.
Is Super Bowl Sunday an appropriate day to announce that I've switched magazine teams? Well, I do have used game (boat show) uniforms headed to charity, a lot of new teammates to meet, and just might get booed in some parts of New York or Boston! I joke, but as of today I am Senior Electronics Editor for the Bonnier Marine Group, now a major Panbo sponsor. I'll be writing for Yachting and Cruising World, and also helping in some fashion with the electronics coverage in Bonnier's several other boating and fishing magazines (see improved Resource section to right). I'm excited, but a wee wistful...
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