<John wrote: ...It would be nice if ENav vendors gave us some options> I have been corresponding with the guys at Rose Point Navigation (Coastal Explorer) on this exact issue. They have a list of about 10 items from me that would sure improve my ability to get a better picture of what I wanted displayed in various situation re AIS. We don't get any name displayed on our Base Station info. Just the MMSI, position, position accuracy, position type and something called the "RAIM flag". We have two "base stations" in range as I write this and it appears like there is more data in their stream that is being interpreted by CE. However, I'm not as good at deciphering the stream as I might have been many years ago. Way too many 3 digit alpha codes to understand and I still haven't found a complete key to them in any AIS document that I have found. I agree that the filtering really needs to be improved. CE does a good job of sorting the list of targets on any of the columns of data but doesn't do a thing on the graphic presentation based on any filtering. They say that they are working on the changes and will "advise". It's been 6 months now and nothing has been forth coming so I'm not holding my breath. OTOH, I don't see any other ENAV vendors that have this AIS thing under control at this time. Gee, it's only a 10 year old concept that has been mandatory on ships for coming on two years now....you'd think those guys would be on it by now, IMHO. I suppose that we'll have to wait for a couple of more years for them to deal with the AIS ATON's! You are right about the ships that show up that didn't appear on AIS. We see this all the time not just on warships. There seem to be many ships both passenger and cargo that are required to have AIS that just don't have it. There are a couple of fast ferries well over 300 tons that are "cloaked". We always keep the radar on 24/7 to make sure we aren't too surprised by them. OTOH, when one appears around a headland going 35/40 kts 3 miles away on a collision course it does get the heart working a bit faster till you get the CPA figured out from the radar MARPA. Not much time..about 4 minutes to impact!! AIS certainly improves your survivability from potential heart failure in this situation. AIS is a great tool to add to the kit that we already have. Early detailed target identification. The potential for using the DSC like feature to request help, ability to call a target by name for any reason (chat, weather, security concerns, etc). We love it and have rapidly grown to use it in anyway we can to improve our situational awareness. As always YMMV.... Dave & Nancy Swan Song Roughwater 58