Chartplotters-Need advice.
I have been running Dell powered Nobeltec 4.1 on two PCs-(a main and redundant spare) for 12 years-The PO was an electrical genius (self proclaimed) and knock on a wet cell-his work has been working so well that I have been unable to mess it up.
Being such a genius and way frugal-I am sure my stuff was obtained in some gray manner. Well I have run north of his Charts on one PC and the other is giving me a bad feeling of impending doom.
There has to be some current nearly free or cheap way of getting a bright screen-with plenty of easily available charts--not chips at $200 each.
Beyond walking into West Marine and bleeding money. Whats the current approach
Kevin Kearney/JOLIE
Oyster Bay/Sagamore Hill
Get Rose Point's Coastal Explorer 2009 <$400. Comes with all charts US) and
free updates. That said you'll have to spring for a new PC. I recommend
one with XP sp3 not vista. Dell still will build them with XP with a
free(?) upgrade to Vista should you get drunk and want it. I've been doomed
to the Nobeltec Max Pro money pit through legacy purchases. If I had it to
do over again I'd have Coastal Explorer. Jeppenson doesn't seem as
interested in the light marine products, just commercial and aviation.
Joe
"Carolyn Ann" GH N-37
Snip "...There has to be some current nearly free or cheap way of getting a
bright screen-with plenty of easily available charts--not chips at $200
each.
..."
download all the free NOAA charts you need
install free SeaClear II
buy a cheap USB GPS (well under $100, like the delorme I use as a backup)
simple.
Pascal
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin Kearney" lotusman1951@yahoo.com
To: trawlers-and-trawlering@lists.samurai.com
Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 3:37 PM
Subject: T&T: Chartplotters-Need advice.
I have been running Dell powered Nobeltec 4.1 on two PCs-(a main and
redundant spare) for 12 years-The PO was an electrical genius (self
proclaimed) and knock on a wet cell-his work has been working so well that
I have been unable to mess it up.
Being such a genius and way frugal-I am sure my stuff was obtained in some
gray manner. Well I have run north of his Charts on one PC and the other
is giving me a bad feeling of impending doom.
There has to be some current nearly free or cheap way of getting a bright
screen-with plenty of easily available charts--not chips at $200 each.
Beyond walking into West Marine and bleeding money. Whats the current
approach
Kevin Kearney/JOLIE
Oyster Bay/Sagamore Hill
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18:30:00
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin Kearney" asked a question I'm sure is echoed by many boat
owners.:
There has to be some current nearly free or cheap way of getting a bright
screen-with plenty of easily > available charts--not chips at $200 each.
Comment.
Where do people think charts come from?
Who provides the raw data and how is it converted into usable data for use
in chart plotters.
Has anyone bothered to work out the true answer.
Navionics and C-Map are the biggest suppliers of cartography. Transas a
Russian company was providing data for the Nobeltec signature series.
However at the consumer level, Navionics and C-Map are it as far as
sourcing goes.
A resent thread documented how a boat had run aground on a rock that
reputedly was 138 feet out of position. To send a survey ship to
resurvey all the little coves and quiet anchorages preferred by
recreational boaters would literally cost millions not just thousands of
dollars.
This is tax payer's money at work. But will the tax payers like it if
their government gave away for free the data so hard earned? Especially to
a private, for profit company in a foreign country.
Somehow that doesn't sound like it will happen.
So the government charges this foreign company a fee for the cartography
that realistically reflects the cost of collecting all that hydrogrphic
data. And guess what? This for profit, privately owned company now turns
around and charges the customer for providing the data in a format they
can use.
I submit that $200 per CD for a whole region is not a bad bargain. In fact
its a great bargain.
The alternative would be for the boater to go and find out the hard way
where rocks, shoals, and dangers are located. <VBG> Any takers?
One collision with a hard rock will easily exceed the cost of that CD of
cartography.
Arild
hastily donning his asbestos suit with tongue firmly in cheek <VBG>
Navionics and C-Map are the biggest suppliers of cartography.
Transas a Russian company was providing data for the Nobeltec
signature series...
I think you'd be surprised how far the reach of Transas extends. I
believe that most of the management resides in the UK. They use a lot
of Russian cartographers to digitize data.
Where do you think Garmin's data comes from? Or Lowrance's?
So the government charges this foreign company a fee for the
cartography that realistically reflects the cost of collecting
all that hydrogrphic data.
Except for Canada, I think you would be shocked at how little the
various governments charge for licenses to their data. They typically
do charge a fair amount more for ENC/vector data - in that case,
there's nothing for the chart company to do except re-format and re-
sell.
I currently have licenses with three non-US governments for chart
data. Some of the prices being charged by other companies for this
data are pretty high. The reason that this happens is because our
nautical navigation industry is completely disorganized. It could
change so easily.
Here's the problem...
In order to license the chart data from the various governments, you
have to guarantee some way so that it can't just be copied and re-used
by everyone else. For raster data especially, there's no copy
protection/encryption technology that is open and shared by the
different software developers for navigation software. Maptech's
BSB4 .CAP file format is about the only thing that exists. It would
be so very simple to use other standards for encryption but then the
different software developers would all have to adopt it in order for
it to have any value. If you can come up with a way to make that
happen, it'll make most recreational boaters outside the US very happy.
The other way around this issue is to have all of the chart data
online. Given a server, the data can be copy-protected to a
particular user pretty easily. Now the boater doesn't have to worry
about having the latest data or losing a CD, etc. It then all comes
down to having connectivity. And that's just a matter of time before
it is very consistent and common...
---===
Jeffrey Siegel
M/V aCappella
DeFever 53RPH
W1ACA/WDB4350
Castine, Maine
www.activecaptain.com
The Interactive Cruising Guidebook
Our cruising blog:
http://takingpaws.blogspot.com
..
Install your 4.1 on a new XP machine (or a used one look around), get a NOAA
update and carry on...
Richard
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05:53:00