Why not ask the man who wrote the book? Dr. Andy Norris writes authoritatively about ship level electronics for the Nautical Institute and Digital Ship; has chaired IEC Technical
Committee 80 on maritime navigation since 1992; once worked as Technical Director for Kelvin Hughes and helped start ChartCo; and is himself a sailor who's earned an RYA Yachtmaster Ocean certificate. Plus he's helped Panbo readers (and writers ;-) better understand the limitations of Class B AIS before. So when I recently attempted to deconstruct the notion that watchkeepers can use filtering tools built into new ship radars with integrated AIS tracking to completely ignore Class B AIS targets, and then found indications that it is sort of possible, I asked Dr. Norris -- whose IEC committee wrote the spec -- to please "clarify just what's permitted in terms of AIS target filtering." The issue, he warned me, "is more complex than it looks"...
One of several things I like about the latest (2.29) version of the Ship Finder HD AIS viewer for the iPad is that when you zoom out you'll see available targets grouped by the shore receivers that Ship Finder's developer ("pinkfroot" is its unusual name) currently has access to. Some users seem to have a hard time getting the concept, but as I've written before, "the most important thing about a remote AIS viewer -- be it on the Web,
or an iPhone, or wherever -- has to be the data feeds it uses." Pinkfroot now also has a free Web viewer that shows the same data feeds. The truth is that coverage around much of North America is pretty darn spotty and will stay that way until more of us set up receivers and give the data feeds to Pinkfroot and all the other developers who rebroadcast it for public enjoyment...
The Vesper Marine WatchMate 850 Class B AIS transponder, which just received FCC approval this week, is already a very interesting product, as discussed here on Panbo in September. But an extra feature that hadn't been developed back then, and still isn't mentioned on the Vesper site, is the ability to use the unit as an anchor watch. And it can be an especially effective anchor watch thanks to the intrinsic nature of AIS and the WatchMate's particular characteristics...
When I came across the New Jersey Star Ledger's finely reported series on the sinking of the scallop dragger Lady Mary, I didn't stop until I'd finished all five chapters, watched the video, and done some further research. It may not sound like a story in the holiday spirit, but aren't we about to gather during the darkest days of the year to celebrate light and love? You're not apt to forget the loving extended family at the center of this dark tragedy. And you'll certainly be reminded about how so many SAR gadgets and systems might and might not work...
Oh my. This morning an email alerted me to this photo of an AIS Display Filter menu on a Furuno IMO-class FAR-2117 radar, and Steve Dashew's understandable misunderstanding of what it means. The seductive myth that ships have the technology to completely ignore Class B AIS transponders is back! And the comments that follow demonstrate just how destructive that myth is, like: "Wow. That is really disturbing. I am sure it is something that the
manufacturers of Class B transceivers don't want us to know. I have been
waiting for the Vesper Marine transceiver to become available - I might
opt for the receive only unit now and save some $$$." Here's the truth: No matter how that display filter is set, the 2117 radar will continue to track all AIS targets and will automatically display a filtered one -- in flashing red, with a buzzer, even! -- if it should enter the watch keeper's area of collision concern, which is exactly how the IMO intends to improve big ship AIS monitoring!...
Once again -- and a nice contrast to my various METS ramblings -- the good Kees Verrujit kindly wrote up his impressions of the huge Amsterdam marine equipment trade show:
Today I visited METS for the fourth year in a row. This year the show was even bigger than last year, by about 20%. Anyone who still claims they can do all halls and booths on one day is a close relation of Baron Münchhausen. I visited some booths as a NMEA 2000 enthusiast, some in my role of technologist for a yard, but most in my role as a delegated Panbo blogger. This year that was a lot easier than last, as more and more people seem to read Panbo or at least know Ben's name -- most vividly portrayed by a huge quote sign in the Fusion Marine Audio booth {like this one, only bigger!}. The major themes I noticed were: Pads (and iOS apps) were everywhere; AIS is taking off in a major way; Chinese electronics are coming; and
NMEA 2000 is here to stay...
Another show, another nifty AIS appliance from Digital Yacht. Following the introduction of the iThing-friendly iAIS receiver in Southampton, DY showed up at NMEA with the AISnet receiver above. It's a pretty obvious concept, but I don't think it's been done before, and it could encourage a nice proliferation of land-based AIS stations flowing target data onto the web...
I don't have a good image yet, and some really interesting new products have revealed themselves in Newport, but I'll bet a lot of readers will want to know about Digital Yacht's iAIS, announced yesterday in the U.K. It's a high quality AIS receiver that can also take in a boat's sensor data -- like GPS, depth, wind, etc. -- via a NMEA 0183 port, multiplex it into the AIS target data, and send it all out over WiFi to the crew's iPhones, iPads, Androids, etc. It will cost about $450, ship in October, and here's hoping it's just the beginning of things to come...
At first blush Vesper Marine's just announced Class B AIS transponder seems similar to the Simrad AI50 and the Icom MT-500R, which is to say a transponder with a handy target plotting and info screen built in. But I think the WatchMate 850 will be significantly different, because Vesper has been focused on AIS collision avoidance for years and has gotten quite good at it. I finally got some hand's on time with a WatchMateRX early this summer, and was even more impressed with the company when I met co-founder Jeff Robbins a few weeks ago. I had not realized, for instance, that Vesper designed and built the AIS receiver that's in the RX model, and they're doing the same with the transponder as well as an interesting antenna splitter also announced...
Oops: "Between July 27 and August 19, 2010, while conducting development testing of its Nationwide Automatic Identification System (NAIS), the Coast Guard inadvertently tele-commanded most AIS users transiting the Eastern United States between lower Connecticut and North Carolina to switch to AIS frequencies other than the AIS default frequencies (161.975 MHz - Channel 87B - 2087 and 162.025 MHz - Channel 88B - 2088)..."
