Boat Beacon AIS?

[Bru]

Gimme a minute to clean off the coffee I just sprayed all over the laptop screen

 

[goelectric]

Data

Is it the same data as http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/ ??


If so then spot on at some unknown point in the recent past.

Didn´t write it, did you?

Hi

The majority of the data (over 25,000 ships) is directly supplied from live raw AIS data feeds from shore stations. Only time stamped data is used and Boat Beacon only displays upto-date ship positions. It interpolates positions between updates and fades out old data after a period of two missed updates from the ship (NB AIS transmission is not continuous, the rate depends on speed of ship and can be as much as 3 minutes between updates)

 

[Tomahawk]

If you sailed from Dover you would have.

Hedgehog and motorway spring to mind.

We used to sail over to Calais from Ramsgage most weekends... pre AIS

yes it is like a headhog and motorway... but with a mark 1 eyeball... nothing to worry about.... Just be very carful of white ships!

Though we have radar and MARPA..

 

[Daydream believer]

managed so far without it

Actually the AIS screen shown is a bit missleading. The ships are shown as 3 miles long to scale.
If one crosses the channel with that amount of traffic one would think the place was deserted
I have crossed well over 150 times & the only times I have wanted AIS has been in fog
However, pressure from the wife has meant this year i have bought a transponder plus Echomax active reflector
I am hoping she can follow my progress with something like Boat beacon from home
Am i right in thinking this is a practical possibility

 

[prv]

pressure from the wife has meant this year i have bought a transponder plus Echomax active reflector
I am hoping she can follow my progress with something like Boat beacon from home
Am i right in thinking this is a practical possibility

Correct, as long as you're not setting off on major ocean passages.

Marine Traffic seems to be the most popular Web viewer for AIS, I'm assuming the missus doesn't need to track you every moment via a smartphone app

Pete

 

[MoodySabre]

I have proper AIS and Boat Beacon. BB is fed by online data and pushes up your data and is updated once a minute at worst. If I switch mine on them I pop up on Marine Traffic within a minute. I think most fixes are fairly good - better than nothing approaching a strange port in poor vis. Absolutely not of any use in the North Sea (although why they can't get phone signals to reach further beats me with all the wind farms acting as base stations). You can also set up groups so you can see where your mates are - all subject to a phone signal of course. It only costs a couple of lattes so why worry about the cost.

 

[GHA]

Correct, as long as you're not setting off on major ocean passages.

Marine Traffic seems to be the most popular Web viewer for AIS, I'm assuming the missus doesn't need to track you every moment via a smartphone app

Pete

The latest marine traffic app on Android is very good.

Looks like most of the Whitstable fishing boats are out tonight and transmitting with their nets down.

Very good app at home anyway, wouldn't like to be without the real thing any more at sea

 

[goelectric]

Actually the AIS screen shown is a bit missleading. The ships are shown as 3 miles long to scale.
If one crosses the channel with that amount of traffic one would think the place was deserted
I have crossed well over 150 times & the only times I have wanted AIS has been in fog
However, pressure from the wife has meant this year i have bought a transponder plus Echomax active reflector
I am hoping she can follow my progress with something like Boat beacon from home
Am i right in thinking this is a practical possibility

Bias alert - I am the author of Boat Beacon - Yes, she can use Boat Beacon or even better our new companion app Boat Watch which has automatic departure and arrival alerts http://pocketmariner.com/boatwatch/ which will notify when you start and stop your voyage.