General tech innovation awards are interesting, but what about our little world? In fact, I was quite slack about reporting the various boating innovation awards all last year, and so I’ve compiled a list of all the electronics-related awards in the four competitions I know of:
Testing that Standard Horizon CPV550 wasn’t the only reason I was on the water yesterday. I was exploring some unfamiliar waters around Cundys Harbor, and it was damn inconvenient to have the big plotter and the Raymarine sounder both suddenly fog up. I’ve had this issue with the DS500X before; Raymarine’s solution was to have me stuff some desiccant bags into the back of the unit, which seemed a little half baked but did in fact work for over a year. Yesterday may have been particularly tough, what with big temperature and humidity swings. I’ll ask Standard about the fogging, but I’ll also write more about the CPV, which I have been quite impressed with.
The truth is I sometimes use Panbo myself as a sort of diary of where I’ve been and what I was up to, at least in the boating/electronics portion of my life. So I’m sticking up this photo a friend (thanks, Howard!) took last Thursday evening. It was amazingly warm—I sailed until after sunset in just a t-shirt—but the signs of Fall are there…the changing leaves, the schooners getting decommissioned and prepped for shrink wrap. (And, by the way, for your sense of Camden geography that tower on Mt. Battie is where I take Panbo’s header photos.)
So I hauled Annie G. yesterday, not just because the season is winding down, but because I’ll be on the road for a while. First a week in NYC visiting the boat’s namesake, me mum, who’s fetched up on one those medical shoals of old age. Then back here briefly, then NMEA conference on Amelia Island, FL, back to NYC, and finally to FLIBS. I’ve got tons of material for Panbo posts, but some days may not get around to it. If you live where there’s a real winter, get some last boat rides in!
As of today, MadMariner.com joins Power & Motoryacht and Sail as a Panbo sponsor. You may not be familiar with the site, as it’s nearly brand new, but it’s an ambitious operation putting up fresh, and mostly original, boating content every day. Mad Mariner will be streaming Panbo along with its other blogs, which puts it side by side with HardWired, another marine electronics blog written by Jeff McLaren. Jeff is a manager at a Southern California marine distribution company, and also created an impressive set of Raymarine C– and E-Series instructional videos, and I think our blogs compliment each other nicely. Meanwhile, Panbo is poised to cross the 50,000 unique reader mark for September, and that doesn’t include some 15,000 Mac fans who stopped by. And note the advertisers who are braving BlogAds’ kludgy interface to get onto the right column. I thank them all, and especially Mad Mariner, for support that will help Panbo to improve and expand.
Oh my! Or maybe “Ole!” as I’m posed like some sort of honky flamenco dancer. Actually I was trying to get the propeller beanie spinning with my left hand while I took the photo with my right. I once teased about the lab coat, and today can reveal its purpose…an August PMY column opening with a less demented version of this shot and describing the setup of what I dubbed the “Marine Electronics Performance and Interface Testing Facility.”
Actually I may be in Bermuda, and able to get online, for a few days. On the other hand, I might have some difficulties getting the gizmology through security! Then again, maybe I can figure out how to post via Iridium. Let’s just say…sporadic until about July 1.
6/22: I made it! But, damn, WiFi is tight in Bermuda. $5/hr, $50/day, or $150/wk at the Dinghy Club here in Hamilton, and most everyone has their home and business AP's locked up solid. I know because I've been wandering the streets with that Nokia N800 in the picture. Finally found a good and open connection in a little mall. Am typing this using a ThinkOutside Bluetooth keyboard. Feeling pretty geek except I just tried going native with a marsala omlett with chili peppers in it. May have been a bad decision.
Woohoo, Panbo V2 is live. In fact, the switchover happened faster than anticipated, actually when I was still out on Electra (good times). I thought I had until late Sunday and thus ended up working Saturday night dealing with various issues. It turned out that my Web guru Lee was also working those weird hours and so was the HostMySite support staff (five calls so far, each answered almost immediately by a knowledgeable human…wow). Big thanks to all.
I still haven’t finished the About and Feature pages (don’t look), and the “suggest” e-mail link isn’t working right now, and I’m sure there are other issues. Please e-mail me here if you spot one. The good news?
That’s the mighty 94’ Electra being shown at Lyman Morse’s grand open house last weekend. The boat is still being finished but she’s already shown high performance and is said to have “a fantastic, state-of-the-art electrical and electronics system.” I got a peek at the opening plus met the man responsible, Electra’s owner/engineer, and was just now invited to join a sea trial tomorrow. I don’t believe I could have said “yes” any faster!
But it will be a busy weekend as I’ll also be helping Lee Heidel switch Panbo over to a new server, new blogging software, and a new design. I think—sure hope—you’re going like it, but no doubt mistakes will be made. In fact, I have to go silent for a day or two, and there may be trouble carrying the last comments over. Please bear with us, and be sure to come back next week.
Geez, call it my American arrogance, but I really thought Larry Ellison’s America’s Cup team was a contender. But I haven’t been paying much attention, and it looks like BMW Oracle Racing may lose the semi-finals today, especially as Ellison (no relation) apparently fired skipper/helmsman Chris Dickson before today’s race. There are video clips and breaking news at cupinfo.com, and Kimball Livingston is blogging the cup here, very well I think.
PS. Yup, the U.S. team is done; no Cup in San Francisco anytime soon, I guess. I dug around for some dope on BMW Oracle’s—or any IACC boat’s—electronics, but only found this vaugeness. What the hell are all those aft antennas (seen in this Gilles Martin-Raget photo)? Anyone?
I’ve got to say that this VHF, also seen yesterday, is pretty darn impressive, especially for the money (under $150 from some sources). Of course I love the Rewind feature, and, unlike the handheld 425, it does work on the weather channels. But more important, really, it sounds good and scans well, and that’s compared to two pricier units I have down in the “lab”, a Uniden 625c and an Icom M504. I must say I like the bigger knobs on both those units, plus the separate squelch, but the F80 is more compact. Still it has a large display, seen above and bigger here. Note the somewhat odd Lat/Long display (and, yes, I was feeding it an odd location from the laptop), but I think that high precision means that the set has taken care of the M.821 gotcha (though I haven’t yet tested it’s ability to plot a DSC call).
Note too the two soft keys, used here for fast favorite channel selection, but also useful when you move through the well thought out menu system. I don’t think any other VHF, aside from the high end Ray218, uses soft keys. I find the screen almost as readable as the Icom, but the Uniden remains my favorite, even though its screen is the smallest of the bunch (color counts!). And how about that basement lab, bigger here? Yes, friends, the test Garmin 545s may have gone missing for a couple of weeks—glitches happen—but now it’s joined by a 430s, and a GXM 31 antenna. More on those tomorrow.
