Channel Ribs
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AIS Price Point
- Thread starter Channel Ribs
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fireball
New member
I would say that the problem you told me could be made public domain .... but that is your perogative so I'll speak from my own limited experience ...
Last weekend was our first outing with the newly installed CP180i and Nasa AIS engine with a Sub antenna clamped to the pushpit railing. As I said above - I needed to get a BNC adapter, but didn't have it at the time of installation so I'd bodged a connection from the AIS antenna to the engine, however the adapter arrived promptly (should've bought the whole lot from Malthouse I know!) and I could spend 10 minutes putting the normal VHF connection on the back of the stub antenna ....
Being impatient I turned off the VHF and used the mast head antenna to feed the AIS engine - superb reception... meanwhile I finished the connection for the Stub antenna, unplugged the engine from the power supply and re-connected the stub antenna (leaving the CP180i on). Once the engine was back up and running I checked for targets but couldn't see any vessels at all... the data was being received on the CP180i (can check using the data viewer) but it wasn't being processed (or processed correctly anyway). The chart and our position continued to be correctly displayed - nicely telling us the range and bearing around our route.
A quick powerdown and up of the CP180i saw normal service resumed and we were getting targets once more - although we were a little confused by the dredger off Chi Harbour that had been transmitting AIS only the week before that now wasn't....
The fault I put down to an interrupted sentence being received by the CP180i that put it in Limbo .. my fault really for buggering about with the engine, but I believe the CP180 should've been able to cope with an interruption like that.
So far I'm pleased with the installation. It can take a little while to fill out the name of the ships - especially those at anchor and I guess that could be improved upon by a dual receiver. Although perhaps it would be cheaper to buy 2 Nasa AIS engines and a multiplexer! (the nasa unit can be programmed to receive on one channel only.)
My next task is to include a feed to the laptop.
Last weekend was our first outing with the newly installed CP180i and Nasa AIS engine with a Sub antenna clamped to the pushpit railing. As I said above - I needed to get a BNC adapter, but didn't have it at the time of installation so I'd bodged a connection from the AIS antenna to the engine, however the adapter arrived promptly (should've bought the whole lot from Malthouse I know!) and I could spend 10 minutes putting the normal VHF connection on the back of the stub antenna ....
Being impatient I turned off the VHF and used the mast head antenna to feed the AIS engine - superb reception... meanwhile I finished the connection for the Stub antenna, unplugged the engine from the power supply and re-connected the stub antenna (leaving the CP180i on). Once the engine was back up and running I checked for targets but couldn't see any vessels at all... the data was being received on the CP180i (can check using the data viewer) but it wasn't being processed (or processed correctly anyway). The chart and our position continued to be correctly displayed - nicely telling us the range and bearing around our route.
A quick powerdown and up of the CP180i saw normal service resumed and we were getting targets once more - although we were a little confused by the dredger off Chi Harbour that had been transmitting AIS only the week before that now wasn't....
The fault I put down to an interrupted sentence being received by the CP180i that put it in Limbo .. my fault really for buggering about with the engine, but I believe the CP180 should've been able to cope with an interruption like that.
So far I'm pleased with the installation. It can take a little while to fill out the name of the ships - especially those at anchor and I guess that could be improved upon by a dual receiver. Although perhaps it would be cheaper to buy 2 Nasa AIS engines and a multiplexer! (the nasa unit can be programmed to receive on one channel only.)
My next task is to include a feed to the laptop.