Though already a fan of SPOT for reasonably easy and inexpensive boat tracking, I didn't realize until yesterday that there is a slick way to track whole fleets of Spot-equipped vessels (or back country runners, dog sleds, whatever), even with photos and commentary on the same site. Go to the Adventure Zone and select the NARC Rally for a current example. I'm not sure, but the service -- provided by TrackMe360, which rents Spots, among other things -- may even be free. And note how spread out and "off course" the NARC fleet (more info here) is, due to the atrocious weather that's plagued the Northeast lately. One thing I'm more sure of is that boats like these will find Spot services easier to use once they can install Hug systems, instead of using handhelds...
As best I can tell, Rich Owings at GPStracklog is the first to write up a field test of the interesting wireless pairing of a specially designed DeLorme handheld mapping GPS with a specially mated Spot Satellite Communicator, and he's pretty excited about what he found. Yes, you can type a 41 character message from anywhere with Spot coverage and post it to Facebook or Twitter, or send it to one of several pre-defined e-mail/text groups. And that includes quite a lot of ocean and coast, as we saw even with the first generation Spot Messenger. And even though DeLorme's core clientele are terrestrial types, I notice that the PN60w/Spot system (and its PN-Series siblings) now support Navionics Gold SD chart cards (and HotMaps lakes), as well as NOAA raster downloads...
That's a beautiful sight, and I don't mean my float mate's headsail furl. Those six LEDs on the Rogue Wave WiFi transceiver are showing (from the bottom up) that it's getting power (via the Ethernet cable), that it's made a connection with a down-below computer (or router), and finally that its connection with an onshore hotspot is good enough to light up all four signal strength indicators. And I can attest that if the hotspot itself has a good Internet connection, this high power WiFi radio is ready to rock. I've been pretty pleased this season with the performance of the Wave Comet I wrote about last March -- it far outperforms the WiFi built into my PCs or phones -- but the Rogue leaves the Comet in the dust...
Maybe I'm missing something, but the Isatphone Pro seems every bit like the game changer Inmarsat claimed it would be. I've made calls from the boat and backyard, sent myself text messages and emails, and replied to them, but have yet to detect a performance issue. Plus I find the handset easy to use. And, mind you, this is a sat phone that's only been shipping for a month or two, and it's using an Inmarsat I-4 geosynchronous satellite orbiting about 22,000 miles over the equator at 98° West. As the phone is telling me in the photo above, it does like to have its antenna aimed vaguely at the bird, and I'd guess that would be even truer if I moved further north and/or east, thus putting more atmosphere between the phone and I-4 Americas. But consider that I'm at about 45°N and 68°W with a lot of trees around me, even to the southwest in the background (and that DirectTV couldn't get a decent signal here, even on a roof higher than the one you see)...and here's how I sound:
Panbo reader Pat Harmon is cruising Alaska aboard M/V Sun Dancer and he kindly agreed to write about some gear, seen above, that's helping him stay in touch:
I recently installed a cell phone booster on my 43' North Pacific trawler, and although I am not an expert, my hands-on experience may be helpful to my fellow boaters. I am computer literate and had Navy electronics training back in the 60's...
Competitive heat is really building in the portable global sat phone/messenger sector, and once it gets sorted, it's got to be good news for those of us who venture beyond cellular networks. Last week Iridium announced that its smaller, cheaper 9602 SBD modem is ready ahead of schedule for some 90 "integration partners," and a few weeks before that Inmarsat detailed its IsatPhone Pro (due in June), including its game changing pricing. And while I discussed both of these developments here in January, it's Globalstar that may be the long term dark horse in this race...
Sorry, but I'm going to start off this week with depressing news: The U.S. Coast Guard -- which I've always thought of as a major proponent of DSC VHF -- recently issued a Safety Alert that treats one of its core features as a hazard. In fact, the Guard now "strongly recommends disabling the automatic channel switching feature..." Does this mean that placing direct DSC calls to AIS targets -- a function that seems to be nicely designed into the DSC system, and one that many of us are enthusiastic about -- may not work well? Yes, it probably does. But, then again, the USCG found itself between a rock and a hard place...
I believe you're looking at the first DSC-based MOB alarm available in the U.S. It's BriarTek's ORCAdsc, and it sells for $275 per alarm (a reasonable seeming price that got Lenny's attention). It automatically activates when submerged in salt water, and a regular DSC VHF radio is all you need to get alarmed onboard (which is what I've always liked about using DSC for MOB). The BriarTek site doesn't list this new product yet (coming soon), but you will learn how serious the company is about MOB electronics. The ORCAdsc materials I have here, including the manual, also suggest a carefully designed and built device, though it turns out that DSC MOB doesn't work exactly like I thought it would...
An interesting new product I didn't see at the Miami Boat Show is this NaviCom RT650 MOB. The company site is mostly in French, but MyBoatsGear.com links to a catalog PDF in English, and Foxtrot Marine has the most detail I can find. This DSC VHF seems to have an integrated AIS receiver much like the Standard Horizon GX2100, plus optional wireless handsets like the Uniden Whams, plus integrated MOB fobs that seem to work a lot like Raymarine LifeTags (with more here). The latter can apparently even trigger a DSC alert, and, in fact, all the parts make a lot of sense together, at least for some boats. Has anyone out there tried an RT650, or know why the company hasn't come to the USA?
Talk about a blue marble! Visions of Johanna is now half way from the Galapagos to Easter Island, and very far from home. But Gram Schweikert was able to call my Google Voice mail number from VOJ yesterday, and the recording sounds decent, as you can hear below. He's going to keep trying the two satcoms system across the Pacific, but he's already completed the main testing, as you'll read after the break, and the news is pretty much all good...
