Admiralty paper charts

Don't get them at a chandlery anymore. All chart agents POD i.e. they will be printed up to date inc of Notices to Mariners within a few days. Imray have the digital printing and the proper paper. Admiralty Small Craft Folios can also be bought POD - you don't have to buy the whole folio, you can buy individual folios to save money. Chart Finder

Gael Force are not agents as far as I see: How to buy - Find an ADMIRALTY Distributor
 
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tillergirl said:
Don't get them at a chandlery anymore. All chart agents POD i.e. they will be printed up to date inc of Notices to Mariners within a few days. Imray have the digital printing and the proper paper. Admiralty Small Craft Folios can also be bought POD - you don't have to buy the whole folio, you can buy individual folios to save money. Chart Finder

Gael Force are not agents as far as I see: How to buy - Find an ADMIRALTY Distributor
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But Seachest is.
Thanks
 
tillergirl said:
Don't get them at a chandlery anymore. All chart agents POD i.e. they will be printed up to date inc of Notices to Mariners within a few days. ....................................... Admiralty Small Craft Folios can also be bought POD - you don't have to buy the whole folio, you can buy individual folios to save money. Chart Finder
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Per the other thread, the Small Craft Charts (which in theory replace the UKHO Small Craft Folios) are very unlikely to save you any money - for £45, which used to get you an entire Folio of 15-30 sheets plus plastic folder, will now get you get just three SCC sheets.
 
If you are on the South Coast the have a look at NV Charts I like their format and you get a free digital version.

I am visiting Sea Chest in Plymouth tomorrow, weather permitting, and will have a chat with them about what is going on. They are Chart Agents and their customer service is amazing.
 
Sandy said:
If you are on the South Coast the have a look at NV Charts I like their format and you get a free digital version.

I am visiting Sea Chest in Plymouth tomorrow, weather permitting, and will have a chat with them about what is going on. They are Chart Agents and their customer service is amazing.
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Has the paper improved? I bought the Atlantic coast NV chart a few years ago but it didn't survive the few drops of rain it got whilst sitting on my chart table. Imray charts that I predominantly use didn't even notice the rain.
 
Buck Turgidson said:
Has the paper improved? I bought the Atlantic coast NV chart a few years ago but it didn't survive the few drops of rain it got whilst sitting on my chart table. Imray charts that I predominantly use didn't even notice the rain.
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Sorry can't comment as I've only been using them for 18 months.
 
Another fan of NV charts here although I have only used them in the Caribbean- it's great to get both digital and paper, never had any problems with durability of the paper.
 
I popped into Sea Chest on Thursday and discussed Admiralty Charts. Yup it is buy one and get it printed. Sadly, unlike OS maps you cannot specify a grid ref for the center of the map. I have contacts at the Hydrographic Office and will be submitting a brilliant idea to them.
 
Sandy said:
I popped into Sea Chest on Thursday and discussed Admiralty Charts. Yup it is buy one and get it printed. Sadly, unlike OS maps you cannot specify a grid ref for the center of the map. I have contacts at the Hydrographic Office and will be submitting a brilliant idea to them.
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I'm not speaking from specific knowledge here, but I suspect that the data are held as sheets, rather than as a continuous database. The reason for my suspicion is the international agreement relating to sharing chart data, which is based on set sheet boundaries - a particular nation takes responsibility for producing a chart of a particular sheet, and then releases the data to other charting agencies who re-issue it with linguistic changes as appropriate. If you see a chart number preceded by INT, it is a sheet produced under this agreement, and you may see the same chart issued by (for example) the Spanish authorities with the legend and notes text replaced with Spanish equivalents. There are other issues to do with the nature of charting - the resolution of the basic data varies widely, from very detailed in some areas to far less detail where a) there is no interest and b) there is no evidence of hazards. Again, holding that type of data in a seamless database is challenging, to put it mildly! This is very different from the OS, who hold a continuous database for the whole of the UK land area at set resolutions (1:1250 in urban areas, 1:2500 in most rural areas, and (I think) 1:5000 in a few very remote and uninhabited areas in the Scottish Highlands).
 
AntarcticPilot said:
I'm not speaking from specific knowledge here, but I suspect that the data are held as sheets, rather than as a continuous database.
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For paper/raster charts I would agree; the workflow almost certainly involves hand-editing* tiff or similar image formats, and not having one-image-per-sheet would be incredibly impractical. For vector it's likely the opposite; one continuous database that can be queried for relevant items and consolidated into a single chart for any desired bounds. Not being able to provide that is likely more due to how the current process was designed (i.e. the compilation of specific cells at specific scales as you mentioned), rather than any great technical difficulty.

* Even if the base image was generated from vector data
 
requiem said:
For paper/raster charts I would agree; the workflow almost certainly involves hand-editing* tiff or similar image formats, and not having one-image-per-sheet would be incredibly impractical. For vector it's likely the opposite; one continuous database that can be queried for relevant items and consolidated into a single chart for any desired bounds. Not being able to provide that is likely more due to how the current process was designed (i.e. the compilation of specific cells at specific scales as you mentioned), rather than any great technical difficulty.

* Even if the base image was generated from vector data
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No chart work involves editing raster data; it's all vector; printed charts and raster data are outputs, not primary data. But the organization of the data is sheet oriented because of the way the IHO and hence national Hydrographic Agencies operate. I've been involved closely with the production of charts in Antarctica; the HO were regular colleagues of ours, so although I don't know for sure how they manage their data, I've got a pretty good idea.

The UKHO produces charts all over the world, many of them isolated sheets. And the data are at all sorts of level of detail. A database structure to handle all that would be extremely complex and practically impossible to maintain. I speak from experience of managing a continent wide topographic database for Antarctica.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
No chart work involves editing raster data; it's all vector; printed charts and raster data are outputs, not primary data.
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I agree that the primary data is vector, what I'm not sure about is how the Admiralty charts are managed.

For example, across the Atlantic NOAA offers three ways to get chart data: the raster product (RNCs, used for printing paper charts), the vector product (ENCs), and a new replacement for the raster product ("NOAA custom charts"). All three of those are based on vector data, but the raster product must still be hand-updated. That is, a cartographer takes the updates from the vector data and applies them to the image files to create the raster output. (Because of the work involved, only the critical-to-navigation updates are applied, in contrast to ENCs that get everything.) The ENC product is compiled from the vector data, I expect with the same constraints you described.

It's the third method that I think is similar to what Sandy has in mind: the ability to generate a custom rendition of a specified area, drawing directly from the primary vector data. This is intended to replace the raster products entirely, and thus unlike ENCs is designed to be printed.
 
I've always found Imray's infallibly helpful and knowlegeable whether by mail or as a drop-in customer at St Ives.
Their stock of charts from a range of international publishers is huge and their website sound and easy to use.
My go-to solution unless I can find it cheaper on Amazon.

Contact us
 
AntarcticPilot said:
No chart work involves editing raster data; it's all vector; printed charts and raster data are outputs, not primary data. But the organization of the data is sheet oriented because of the way the IHO and hence national Hydrographic Agencies operate. I've been involved closely with the production of charts in Antarctica; the HO were regular colleagues of ours, so although I don't know for sure how they manage their data, I've got a pretty good idea.

The UKHO produces charts all over the world, many of them isolated sheets. And the data are at all sorts of level of detail. A database structure to handle all that would be extremely complex and practically impossible to maintain. I speak from experience of managing a continent wide topographic database for Antarctica.
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Does the S-57 standard (or in future S-100 series) define the way they hold the vector data ?
 
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