With reference to Marge's comments about the electronic charting for places
like the Tenn-Tom, here is what I have found and decided to do about it.
My research (I didn't really look at other than Maptech and Garmin because
these are the units I have in place) showed that the only existing chart
coverage for the Tenn-Tom and River system in general were Maptech. But,
they require you to purchase about 3 or 4 chart kits just to cover the
inland portion from Lake Michigan to Mobile, for the entire loop it is
probably 8 or 10 chart kits. At $249.00 a pop, that to me was ridiculous
seeing as I am going to have the paper charts anyway. The cost of these,
plus the fact that I will primarily be relying on my Garmin Plotter for
navigation led me to the conclusion that it is just not worth the cost. I
mean how lost can you get on a river?
But, the above said, it would be nice to have the ability to determine your
approximate position on the system at a glance versus having to plot a lat
long on a chart all the time. So, here is the answer that I have come up
with. I purchased the equipment from Garmin to program my own BlueChart
chip, Chip programmer, blank BlueChart chip (64mb) and a Mapsource US TOPO
CD/ROM. I then downloaded to the chip all the river system from Chicago to
Mobile onto the chip. I have already plugged this into my plotter and what
I get is complete coverage of the river system, scalable and such that it
will track my progress as I move along. Granted the TOPO doesn't really
provide any "marine navigation info" but between the plotter and the paper
charts which will be always close at hand I will be able to navigate most
handily?
Since I already had the desire to purchase the chip programmer and data
cards for possible future use of the Mapsource Americas BlueChart CD's, the
only real additional cost I had was for the US TOPO which I purchased
discount for $89.00. Compare this to the more than $1000.00 one would
spend to acquire all the Maptech charts for the area.
Jim Alexander
Port Charlotte, FL
With reference to Marge's comments about the electronic charting for places
like the Tenn-Tom, here is what I have found and decided to do about it.
My research (I didn't really look at other than Maptech and Garmin because
these are the units I have in place) showed that the only existing chart
coverage for the Tenn-Tom and River system in general were Maptech. But,
they require you to purchase about 3 or 4 chart kits just to cover the
inland portion from Lake Michigan to Mobile, for the entire loop it is
probably 8 or 10 chart kits. At $249.00 a pop, that to me was ridiculous
seeing as I am going to have the paper charts anyway. The cost of these,
plus the fact that I will primarily be relying on my Garmin Plotter for
navigation led me to the conclusion that it is just not worth the cost. I
mean how lost can you get on a river?
But, the above said, it would be nice to have the ability to determine your
approximate position on the system at a glance versus having to plot a lat
long on a chart all the time. So, here is the answer that I have come up
with. I purchased the equipment from Garmin to program my own BlueChart
chip, Chip programmer, blank BlueChart chip (64mb) and a Mapsource US TOPO
CD/ROM. I then downloaded to the chip all the river system from Chicago to
Mobile onto the chip. I have already plugged this into my plotter and what
I get is complete coverage of the river system, scalable and such that it
will track my progress as I move along. Granted the TOPO doesn't really
provide any "marine navigation info" but between the plotter and the paper
charts which will be always close at hand I will be able to navigate most
handily?
Since I already had the desire to purchase the chip programmer and data
cards for possible future use of the Mapsource Americas BlueChart CD's, the
only real additional cost I had was for the US TOPO which I purchased
discount for $89.00. Compare this to the more than $1000.00 one would
spend to acquire all the Maptech charts for the area.
Jim Alexander
Port Charlotte, FL
