AIS Questionnaire

[sjtindale]

I am a student at the University of Plymouth conducting research into the effects that AIS B will have on collision avoidance. I am asking both leisure users and professional mariners their opinion on AIS as a system and its uses.
Please follow the link to answer a short questionnaire on AIS
AIS Questionnaire

A little about myself...
I have been sailing dinghies and yachts most of my life and enjoy every minute of it. I currently study Marine Studies (Merchant Shipping) and have 13 months of sea time as a cadet on Merchant vessels. I was very impressed with AIS when I started using it on my first ship in 2006 therefore decided to do dissertation on it. I believe that the increased visibility of small craft that AIS will present to ships is spectacular.
I have an account of coming upon a 40ft yacht with AIS off the coast of the US and the visibilities that I was able to see them on each of the navigation systems that we had onboard. If anyone is interested I can look up the distances that we were able to observe them at.
Well thank you for reading my post and please ask if you have any questions.

 

[jfm]

I do find it a bit mixed up. A small boat can easily see a massive ship, even on a low grade radar. A large ship might not see a small boat and might plough on regardless. A small boat under sail might not be able to get out of the way

Yet the way the market is going is that large ships transmit AIS, whereas small boats receive only. So this gives the small boat another way of seeing the large ship they can already see (and MARPA), and gives the large ship no help in seeing the invisible small boat.

Isn't that mixed up? Shouldn't this flooding of the market with receive-only devices stop?

I have therefore just got an AIS transmitter for my new boat (following input from Hurricane, who has done the same). On low vis or big night passages I'll transmit. Obviously I'll turn the transmitter off when in an anchorage so as not to clutter everyone's AIS screens

A receive/transmitter costs around £600 so it would be good if they could be made cheaper to encourage mass take up. And people would have to be educated to keep them turned off in busy ports in good vis etc

 

[gjgm]

did you get the Comar? Do you have the option of switching off the transmit, while still receiving?

 

[sjtindale]

Its a interesting point and I do agree with you. Leisure craft have a very small return on the radar which can easily be lost in clutter from waves or rain therefore for me transmitting AIS would allow the visibility to be there. Although I have recently been reading reports stating that AIS B objects wouldn't always show up on AIS A sets. Off hand I cannot remember the exact quote or circumstances. An interesting point for me was in the MAIB report for the Ouzo stating that AIS wouldn't of avoided the accident due to the display not being overlayed on the radar. However it should of shown on the MKD which in my experience on the bridge does get checked regularly to obtain traffic movements and awareness of the surrounding areas. I would like to see more yachts with AIS transmitting sets but the problem of over crowding the displays does become an issue. Another point was if everything has AIS then the non AIS targets on the radar may be taken as a false echo and not as much attention paid to it. Its a very interesting subject and I look forward to seeing the outcome.

 

[Nick_H]

9/10 for a clearly worded and to the point questionnaire, and also for taking the time to explain who you are and why you're interested. You'd be amazed at some of the lazy, ambiguous, and poorly worded questions we get on here from students. Only one issue with the questions though, there isn't an option for "I don't have AIS fitted, but I still have an opinion", or do you only want those with AIS fitted to answer the questionnaire? That's fine, but you'd get a very limited response from leisure boaters, as not many have the system fitted.

 

[sjtindale]

Thank you for the kind response. I am interested in everyone's point of view if you have AIS or not. The non-solas part of the questionnaire is predominately aimed at owners who have the capacity to purchase equipment although I am interested in anyone who takes an active role in collision avoidance/navigation. Before putting the questionnaire online I have been asking mariners in all sorts of places via VHF with the most exciting being a British boat off the coast of Brazil who had sailed all the way round South America and were on their way homeward. What a brilliant journey.
I wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who has replied to the questionnaire I have had a brilliant response with lots of answers mounting in my mail box. Its amazing the number of people who are awake at 2 in the morning and are willing to answer a questionnaire. If you know of anyone who may be interested in completing a questionnaire please pass on the link I want as many different opinions as I can get.
Cheers

 

[jfm]

Yes I got the Comar. Nicely, the tx off switch is done by a loose pair of wires led to connector terminals on the comar unit, so you can loose the ugly Comar black box out of sight and mount the Tx on/off switch wherever you want, eg you can use a Carlingswitch to make it look OEM on your dashboard

Haven't fitted it yet.

 

[oceanfroggie]

Agree, it's back to front. We need ships to see small craft. Having said that, they still may not want to change course anyway for a plethera of small craft criss crossing their forward track in areas of busy leisure traffic. Ships want to avoid hitting other ships, not as worried about hitting small craft. Hence they are likely to filter out display of small class B targets in busy areas to avoid screen cluitter that could mask a ship, then they can focus on traffic conflicts large enough to be a hazard for them. An over crowded display could actually reduce safety as the information overload causes confusion.

 

[sjtindale]

I agree with you OceanFroggie that the amount of clutter could produce obscured screens and therefore create a confused image. Somewhere I have a picture of a fleet of fishing boats off China, pure madness there were small craft everywhere trying to navigate a 230m ship fully loaded with iron ore through that was a difficult task I can tell you. The picture on the radar was as if we were approaching a land mass with a few gaps here and there.
I have also been coming out of a fjord in Norway fully laden when a yacht motor sailing had decided to cross us from the port side. They must of been a brave sole or didn't see the 88,000t bearing down upon them. We took avoiding action and all was well although the national rail adverts of not crossing the tracks comes to mind.

 

[Piddy]

I suppose there would be some merit in yachts having transmitters if they are in distress, much like the DSC alert. It would make it a lot easier for a lifeboat to find them.

It would seem a huge overkill to flood a radar or dedicated display with thousands of targets (bad choice of word) on a day without restricted visibility - perhaps an option for bad weather would be an idea?
Sadly I could then see the fog lamp syndrome appearing with people having them switched on at the wrong times.

Just thinking out loud...

I hope your course is going well and you aren't too distracted by fellow course mates!!

Cheers