From Dan Corcoran in Valencia, SP: Because of the great speeds of the two sailboats, this America's cup will be held further from shore and on a longer race course than those of recent memory, causing tremendous challenges communicating on the race course. Even the judges are unsure that they will be able to communicate successfully in boats equipped like the one pictured above with retractable towers for VHF communications and satellite dishes.
The smaller, cheaper Iridium short-burst data (SBD) modem I heard about at Fort Lauderdale is now official and, wow, doesn't it look able to "disappear into as many marine devices as possible!" It even has GPS input/output ports so that it and the modem can easily share a dual-mode antenna. Hardware and service costs aren't specified but Iridium is claiming that the 9602 will have "the highest value in the industry." I, for one, can't wait to see devices like the Spot Messenger that are global and bi-directional, not to mention what the MFD and marine security/tracking developers might do with the 9602. And I'm glad for Iridium that it's got this and OpenPort going on, because it sure looks like Inmarsat is finally about to attack its dominance in the portable satellite phone department...
The tidal wave of interesting iPhone boating apps rolls on! The screen at left above (click for bigger) shows a beta version of Memory Map's upcoming charting app and I can tell you that it already handles NOAA raster charts and topo maps with speed and smoothness I didn't think possible on plain 3G hardware. At middle is the brand new Ships Ahoy!, a $3 AR (augmented reality) relative to Ship Finder and the other AIS viewers that lets you just point an iPhone 3Gs (you need the compass) toward a vessel or two to get their names and details (if the area is covered by a network receiver). And finally there's Navionics' neat new Ski:US, which admittedly has nothing to do with boats but does speak to this big marine company's big commitment to mobile apps. It happens to have my local Camden Snow Bowl among the so-far-limited ski area coverage, and it works great. In that screen shot I'm playing back the tracks (in yellow) I cut right after last week's big snow dump, in particular the --- MPH moment I lost board control in a huge drift. All these possibilities, and lord knows what else, will expand if Apple introduces a 4.0 version of the iPhone operating system this afternoon. But of course the bigger questions swirl around the Apple tablet, or whatever they decide to call it...
The gadget and GPS blogs are all over this combination of DeLorme handheld GPS and Spot messenger, which will apparently get official when the CES opens tomorrow. With good reason, too, because a user will be able to key a free-form text message into that new PN-60w and get it delivered from a lot of places where cell phones are useless. I didn't think a Spot could handle custom messages from the point of origin, and it sure makes me wonder what we don't know yet about the fixed marine model...
These 3-foot, 3dB VHF whips look very smart for sailboat mast head installs, especially the Windex-style apparent wind direction indicator built into the $190 Galaxy 5440 model. Both it and the $160 5445 model come with 65 feet of RG-58 coax cable and an "exclusive solderless connector system" that enables easy removal of the whip, and also looks easier to fish up a mast than the standard PL-259 connector at the other end. Press release here.
Following last week's introduction of the very interesting GX2100 & 2000 VHF/rxAIS fixed units, Standard Horizon is today announcing significant updates to its high end handhelds. I was already a big fan of the HX850S with its built-in GPS and full DSC features, but now the new HX851 takes care of my main original complaint -- lack of navigation features for small boat and back up use -- and adds a couple of cool twists...
Damn! An AT&T 3G smart phone that can use the world's largest commercial satellite for voice and data if you roam beyond cell range, no oddball second phone number, no dorky antenna? The big bird is up, the Genus phone is at the FCC, and the whole deal seems on track to be real in early 2010. But will it be a big deal for boaters? That may depend on what system developer TerreStar means by "offshore coastal waters"...
I consider this fairly big news. Not only does the GX2100 combine full featured Class D VHF with a true dual AIS receiver in one box with a fairly big screen, and include most all of the nice added features the pairing can support, but it does it all for $400 MAP (minimum advertised price). That's a lot of features per gear dollar, and I'm going to list most of them because they're not online elsewhere yet:
I previewed this on my Ft. Lauderdale Twitter feed (did that thing work for anyone?), and I remain enthusiastic. HUG stands for Hybrid Universal Guardian, which is quite a mouthful, but then again this puppy can do a lot for a boater...
One of the most interesting meetings I had in Fort Lauderdale was with Patrick Shay, who fairly recently took the reins of Iridium's data division (after much related experience at Motorola and Sirius, and a lot of boating). His message was clear: Iridium has realized that data is important, in fact the fastest growing part of its business, and wants to see its SBD modems "disappear into as many marine devices as possible!" Coming soon is a new version of the 9601 modem above, which will be smaller and cheaper but still able to transmit a 340 byte message from anywhere on the globe in less than 60 seconds with very high reliability. It can also quickly receive a 270 byte burst from anywhere via the Iridium ground stations, and it's that two-way nature that suggests so many interesting possibilities...
