handheld plotters: pre-emptive strike

[Guest]

The mby home page says that an article in Aug MBY will ask "if handheld chart plotters are worth the expense?".

1) Eh? of course they aren't worth it. But neither is a stupid powerboat, and they're far more expensive. Much cheaper to get a ferry. Or if colin walk to pub without messing about with canal locks, or if hlb sit in toilet, or if jfm buy a Dixons shop, or any of the above for that other chap who wants to saw his boat in half and glue it back together.

2) Handheld chart plotters are often much better than fixed becos you can take them home and they don't go rusty on wet soggy boat.

3) handheld plotters don't get sold for sod all when you sell boat.

4) when you go on a mates boat, you can take handheld in case s/he is luddite, or has busted/had stolen/sold gps to someone on BB. Also extreme smugness if have used it in elsewhere so have loads of med/caribee waypoints.

5) with handheld, you can practise and plot courses before arriving on board. Much better than arrive prat about oh soddit it's busted/stolen/sold let's go anyway.

6) In aeroplanes, with handheld plotter, you can outsmug the smug pilot coming round eg "Everything alright? We're cruising at around 420knots and you should be able to see Lyons over there".
No handheld plotter: ooh yes capting.
With handheld "no, that's Macon, Lyons further along yet and we're only doing 375 knots so git back up there and whack it open you skinflint! Also book us a taxi on 109.9" This only allowed if you have rented the plane itself. Also plotter needs to be able to cope with up to 999knots and give airport data eg garmin 195, but anyway.

7) As some of u kno, I am a bit landed with garmin 175 since I now have hundreds of quids worth of chip charts for it. So whatever they say I won't get another. Worst of bunch: Garmin 175 - only a dipstick would buy this. Praps I had better not read it.

Any other fans of handheld plotters?

 

[Guest]

My world changed when I got an Garmin E-trex handheld GPS.

I sailed quite happily for 40 years with finely honed navigation skills such as "it will be over there somewhere" and "we must be within a couple of miles of it by this time".

I even got lucky with a few compass bearings when BOTH of the things I took bearings on turned out to be what I thought they were.

Now I get a message that says "accurate to within 15 feet" or somethig similar and I feel all numb with fear and apprehension.

I'm not saying that it is less fun, it's just that I now have no excuses for either hitting something OR missing something.

Not only that - spending time checking the damn thing and then religiously plotting what it says on the chart has virtually eliminated "horizon gazing" (i.e. looking for what was supposed to be there an hour ago). This has severely reduced my chances of noticing other things that the GPS doesn't tell me about such as crab-pot floats and semi-submerged tree trunks.

Will I get rid of it? Absolutely NOT - but on the other hand I will still use the "old ways" occasionally so that if it ever fails I can revert back to "Did you feel that? It must be shallower here than it says on the chart." and still be believed.

Best regards )

Ian D

 

[Guest]

Re: plotters tho, not just mini gps

All agreed Ian. But my issue is handheld gps *chart plotters*. These things have a gps contraption thing that knows where you are (like yours does) but also a built in map. So you get a little blob on the map of where you are and a line to show where you're going, if you are going somewhere. You can get extra little "chips" (sorry if you know all this) for the fine details of the region where you are. So, for example, in showing this to a friend, I "zoomed in" on the map to show the exact pontoon on which his boat was positioned: amazed he ran off to show his mate and that slightly different pontoon oosition was shown. Fab eh?

So you can see that handheld plotters are just as fab as a lickle handheld gps, only better, albeit of course more expensive.

I'm sure that these manufactuirers need our complete support, because the technology won't end here. Oh no. although they'll soon be so samll that that they'll be lost down the sink, bio engineering developments will eventually allow us to slightly alter our DNA and have the homing abilties of a pigeon! With the happy side effects of being to survive on breadcrumbs, swivel our head about more, fly and do poohs that match the colour of the bog.

But meanwhile all this technical advancement might be hampered if we don't rush out and buy lovely electro kit, then throw it away and buy some more. If our parents had done more of this a few decades ago instead of buying Austin Cambridges, playing the piano, going on walks, fishing and other 17th century pursuits we might now all have nice boat-polishing droid robots as promised by that James Burke. And when the robots turn up (of which a handheld gps chart plotter is a quite specialised early version), they'll soon become much better, perhaps very good looking with sexy voices and nice legs. Phwoarr. Except I might be perched up on the rigging by that time, so it'll have to be bird shaped before I buy it. Anyway, perhaps you might see the point.

 

[Guest]

Re: plotters tho, not just mini gps

Matts

The reason I don't "know" about chart plotters (hand-held or otherwise) is that (with the excpetion of women) I try to never to look too hard at something I can't afford to buy.

And if I had applied the same rule to women I could probably be able to afford to buy a chart plotter for each day of the week and two for Sundays!!

Incidentally - heard about the German gentleman who is apparently suing Mercedes/BMW/Audi or someone similar?

Apparently he was "navigating" along a road at high speed with his new GPS toy (a terrestrial chart plotter I presume) and following the instructions exactly.

The "chart" showed the road, the river and the crossing.

According to legend it was only when he was in the middle of the river that he realised he should have waited for the ferry to arrive!!

Best regards )

Ian D

 

[Guest]

I reckon you're right. Even the commercial ships aren't permitted to use chartplotters. When Simrad put up one of their chartplotters for approvals by IMO the shipping industry laughed. They only needed 'Global Navigators' just the lat long readout. Simrad being clever took the CMap decoder and world map chips out and knocked 30% off the price. Seems then they were 'too cheap' and obviously no good. The fixit was to increase the price by 100%. Sold like hot cakes!
They still hit things as you say.

 

[jfm]

Re: from Newport S. Wales

Matt...hmmm yes as a h/h user I'm interested to hear what they will say. First off, there are only two proper plotters namely the Mg6000 C-Map job and your 175. That's the way it's been for about 3 years. All the others download bits of dodgy chart off a PC which isn't really cricket nor any good. And I agree MBY shouldn't nanny us and say whether they're good value, we can figure that for ourselves, they should tell us what they think about the plotters themselves, whether make good pot noodles and other practical stuff.

Hey put a list of your surplus Navionic chips on this BB, at least I can have a laugh!! Actually you can sell them, I sold two I think on here it's only the outer Mongolia type stock that moves a bit slowly. You've gotta bite the bullet sooner or later cuz you're gonna have C-Map on the Leopard and anyway you can tell them to include all the chips for this hemisphere because it's fully in the price innit?

Ian, can see the guy's point on car nav. I have the GPS "plotter" in a BMW and the map clearly shows continuous roads from Poole-Cherbourg, Dover-Calais, Harwich-Esjeberg etc and there's no mention that you have to even slow down let alone catch a ferry. Given the gizmo level on these cars buyers are quite entitled to assume you drive into water and the wheels retract and propellors appear. I haven't tried it yet but I wonder what the nav voice would say...it's a rather sexy surrey girl accent that usually says stuff like "At the next roundabout, take the second exit" but when you hit water I wonder if she says "Oh you f$%&ing idiot". Matt did pereri get that voice exe to work btw?

Matt, on MBY more generally why don't you just write the whole magazine? It seemed heavy as I trudged it home from WHSmith last week then I saw the letters page (very funny!) and that's why.

JFM

 

[Guest]

Re: to leekland

Yes, I was quite surprised that they went for it and printed all three letters in the one issue, and they were nicely sub-edited too. I should retire from writng letters to mags with excellent average.

Unfortunately I hear that the corby people (they trawl, yerkno) were none too pleased, and my name appar. mentioned with nasty tones at recent dealer meeting. MBY jolly pleased cos they can blame me and wd've got a kicking. But, F didn't fix up the boat much when new with seawater sloshing about and not-low enuf bilge pumps and knackered air,passarelle, tabs, bogs all of which were suspect but just outlasted the 1st year etc .

I am quite surprised that there is such lack of user feedback requests, not like ferrari who send detail questionnaire with request to rate performance (very good, good, moderate, poor, very poor)

I was gonna write a 4th letter saying how blimmin fortunate it was that the head designer had decided that you didn't need a marine background. Surely anyone who studies at coventry then works at corby is clearly trying to do their best to *avoid* gettting a marina background.

An designer from f did come on the boat at my inv. 2yrs ago, although he was fairly unkeen yawn alright, and mainly was aghast when I suggested B&O instead of crappo fiesta cd/radio as option (but they're so expensive! yeah but er so is the boat) and did nothing much about other stuff that wd've made a cheaper but better boat, as they sacked him or he left anyway. The Lanchester bit got me a bit, obv with such a fab reputation that they er change the name of it every few years, but that's enuf nastiness, and it was all done in jest hoho ouch.

I have the garmn g-charts all the way round the coasts from London to sicily via biscay, portugal, sp, balearics, all french coast, corsica. Oh and also a crappy lowestoft to humber one. But of course I can't sellem cos that's one of the backups, and we have c- + g-charts running simultaneously for comparative purposes, plotting multiple-sources to get proper accuracy better than the poxy so-called 5m, and to watch how although the radar arch usually travels at the same speed as the dashboard area, its change of direction always lags or leads a tiny bit, that's interesting isn't it boys? and now, oh they gone to watch the telly. Also excellent for any visiting salty seadog mutter paper charts are better, "and what'll you do if that breaks down?" he says pointing to fixed plotter. "I'll use the 175, matey, running here, and the 195 for spare battery pack and in event of needing a runway or accidentally being scooped up by an aeroplane when a normal plotter (sub 99knots) is no good, and also the tiny handheld xl12 here". Then throw his paper chart into the sea and tellim to get his spares out, all ready with waypoints and course plotted. Of course, this doesn't happen with colin who is such a convert he's chucked his compass away.

We did get the exe running and quite good laugh, thanks.

 

[jfm]

Fairline, Pete Goss here in Leekland

They're a pretty miserable crowd when you criticise them. A Fairline dealer meeting eh, where your name mentioned, cor blimey that must be a high powered event, as in about 40 blue blazers (900,000 volts of static when they shuffle their bottoms) and aggregate IQ of 72.

I could write long list of similar screw ups on our boat, like they fitted upgraded bowthruster but used wiring for the standard one, this phutted out and when Vetus came to see it they went apeshit about poor quality install, all had to be reworked. And our boat #146 came without anchor plate depite it being ordered cuz they screwed it onto #145 by mistake (lucky you, whoever bought #145, though did you order a genny cuz we got a nice one without asking for it....?)

I have never run c and g side by side but funnily enuf that's why I bid for the Garmin colour plotter in the thread below, I was gonna lash it up alongside the cmap simrad to compare. (That auction seems to have dried up, wunder wot's happenin? I'll make a post in a mo). Not sure about 99knot limit - do you mean the 175? The magell 6000 handheld that I use does 999knots and I often use it midatlantic to check speed and progress and excuse to chatup stewardesses.

Talking of which, here in Leekland, had dinner with Pete Goss last nite. We're at our corporate awayday offsite job and we invited him as after dinner speaker. He explained how he navigated his first transat, Plymouth to Newport Rhode Island. He had no plotter, just a few charts that he wasn't familiar with, and he said they had already decided to take the northerly great circle route so he took a BA and American airlines timetable and he followed the jet tail streams mostly, also he checked he was heading towards sunset and away from sunrise as a 12-hourly sanity check to make sure he hadn't picked up the Buenos Aries flight by mistake.

He was, BTW, a most engaging speaker, told the whole Aquacorum (Haydn, is that correct sp?) story and all about turning back in F12 to rescue the French guy, also the development of the Phillips cat and the heart wrenching decision he made in the N Atlantic to abandon ship and watch it drift into the darkenss after 50 odd people had spent sev years making it happen. Brought tears to many eyes. Had some great stills of Vendee Globe and video of Phillips at 40+knots. He was a very engaging speaker, not loud nor extrovert, but a gripping story and some very funny one liners, and a bit of a corporatey message about benefit of teamwork (had to get him to say that, to justify it to my partners, I was only interested in the sailing). Anyway just mentioning all this in case you were stuck for idea for guest speaker at LV annual bash or whatever. Also much cheaper than Bob Monkhouse or Marg Thatcher

JFM