Admiralty RYA chart plotter

R

roger

Well-Known Member
Joined
16 May 2001
Messages
1,142
Location
Overwinter in Sweden, sail in Northern Baltic, liv
Visit site
I've just been generously given one of these CDs covering the South West. Not terribly generous as it will expire at the years end.
It goes what it says and provides a large number of UKHO charts totally in their paper published form. The scanning is very good with the tidal diagrams for example very clearly visible.
However I'm not very impressed. For a start its pretty expensive at £45 each year. The last german made chart pak I bought ( of a large part of Denmark) included a similar CD as well as a printed set of charts and neither pack nor CD has expired. OK The Admiralty version is a plotter too and shows the boat position on the chart.
The charts are completely un modified leaving estuaries all cut up in fragments as on the paper chart.
There seems not to be an automatic method of moving on from chart to chart.

Altogether it seems to be a rather odd unfinished and expensive product. I have to say I havent used it in anger. I wonder what the panel thinks.

<hr width=100% size=1>Roger
 
Used the Solent pack interfaced with GPS on USB port. Trouble was 1. had to have disc in and 2. after St Kats point there was no charts left. Would be much more useful for a cross channel passage chart so one could keep log. Turned on Microsoft Autorote Wont buy next years tho would be interested on instead and watched the 'car' cross the channel.
Know Tome does clever stuff with scanned charts etc.nso will be interested in his commments.

<hr width=100% size=1>
 
I think the man who said "waste of money" was talking about this Admiralty scam.
of course you could probably get round the year problem by resetting the clock in your computer, and then re-loading the software.

<hr width=100% size=1>
 
Wasn't the idea that you used it for a year, then replace it next year with a new one with a new set of fully updated charts.
Assuming you update other type of electronic charts on annual basis, how does price compare ?, and how does it compare with generation one of the chart plotters, will it get better with development ?
I recon it will be 5 years before I get to that level, so they may have sorted, or it's a dead system.

Brian



<hr width=100% size=1>
 
In the UKHO's slightly odd world, you replace paper chart folios every year to get the latest up to date one. So the electronic plotter is simply an electronic equivalent with a basic plotter thrown in. As such, it doesnt seem bad value, but in comparison with the cost of the non updated pirated plotting software lots of people seem to have, then its expensive.

When you are using it in anger, it follows the boat across the charts it contains. The charts have edges because it is a raster system - you are possibly more used to the vector ones which are seamless. It has fairly basic capabilities - no autohelm control for example. But without doubt, the charts themselves are some of the clearest you will see on a screen.

Personally, I think its a good starting point if you have a lappy available anyway, but are unsure whether you will like electronic nav. Buy one, play with it, and if you like electronic nav, then consider one of the all singing all dancing systems. You'll pay a lot more but you'll get a lot more. For myself, I have gone back to paper.

<hr width=100% size=1>this post is a personal opinion, and you should not base your actions on it.
 
<it follows the boat across the charts it contains. The charts have edges because it is a raster system - you are possibly more used to the vector ones which are seamless>

Sorry to disappoint you but when you use raster charts on a decent plotting package such as Maxsea, they are seemless too.

<hr width=100% size=1>
 
I'm not sure so can be corrected on this but I thought the charts were seamless on Ozzie explorer too. Now that is a basic package.

Martin

<hr width=100% size=1>
 
I got one at the London Boat Show last winter so I have had it all summer. Snag was my GPS can only handle 9-pin "RS232" and my laptop can only do USB. Took me till July to find the necessary adapter and settings to make the things talk to eachother. Trick is to set the GPS to output NMEA.

I took it to sea and it was amazing to see it showing exactly where I was and when to tack for the next mark etc.

Next snag was that the laptop ran out of leccy after about 3 hours and nothing I can find in the "economy measures" section of the control panel seems to make much difference. From the label on the mains adapter I see that the computer is going to need 5 amps at 18 volts which will need a rethink of my boat system. At the moment the battery gets about 2 amp-hours from the charger in the outboard for each trip - fine for the GPS and echosounder!

Another thing that would be nice would be a facility to export the voyage details to a spreadsheet so I could work out tacking angles, vmg etc at various points. You can display all the data in a table but I can't find a way of extracting the numbers without copying them all out on a piece of paper and keying them back in.

Geoff

<hr width=100% size=1>
 
Interesting that there is a seamless join between raster charts with Maxsea. Presumably, they crop each chart so that they join on a line, and exand / shrink to get them all onto the same scale. If so, how does the system cope with situations where several charts cover the same location, at different scales and with different levels of detail?

Mind you, the prices I have seen ($400 for maxsea and $150 for a chart area) I dont think it is a basic package . The UKHO one is actually cheaper than the equivalent charts ir the plotter is free.

Sure its limited, but you get what you pay for.

<hr width=100% size=1>this post is a personal opinion, and you should not base your actions on it.
 
The ECS I use is seamless with raster charts, and I would have thought that to be usual. It is so seamless that when charts overlap and it moves to the next one unless one looks at the chart number or it is a much larger scale chart one would not notice.

If several charts cover the same area it starts up to the largest scale one and from thereon defaults to the best scaled one for heading and speed, unless you decide to choose another (the intricacies of its chart choosing algorithm I do not know but it does not do silly things like change to a large scale chart if you sail across the corner of it).

John

<hr width=100% size=1>I am the cat but I am only 6.
 
...and you can join images of charts (and anything else) together seamlessly using Panavue image assembler - a very handy bit of software readily available on the net. Of course where you might get digital images of Admiralty charts from I have no idea - I mean you can't just SCAN them now can you?

<hr width=100% size=1>
 
I believe that the charts that you get with the package are ARCS charts which are the digital images that are used to print paper charts, hence the fragmented nature of the charts. If you use one of the commonly available packages, such as Navmaster, to drive the ARCS charts the jumps between bits of charts occur seemlessly.

Regarding payment of £45 per year to keep the charts updated, I don't know how many you get with the package but to give you some idea of comparable costs I pay £70 a year to keep my 200 ARCS charts updated each year. ARCS charts are updated by effectively overwriting a small section of the digital image from the original chart with the update. A technique that could be applied to the RYA package.

<hr width=100% size=1>
 
The old PC electrics !!

The charger states amps as per charging the PC ..... not as when its already charged and just working.

If you go to Maplins and buy the 12V to DC Notebook charger - you will have a good power supply with lower power requirement than via inverter etc.

The other way is to tape over the battery contacts and connect the power - so only running the pc and not charging at anytime .... its worked on all notebooks of mine .... despite manufacturers warnings not to run without battery !! BUT please I only advise that I DO THIS ..... if anyone else has problem from this I am not responsible !!

PM me if you want anymore gems !!!


<hr width=100% size=1>Cheers Nigel http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gps-navigator/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/searider/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top