maptech electronic charts

[chops]

hi
has anyone used the maptech offshore navigatior program,im looking to buy a system for my pc ,but most seem to be over priced, maptech seems the chepest but what are the charts like , and will the they accept the new arc admrilty folios,
other programs iv'e looked at are seapro lite but by the time you buy the addons for this program it runs into several hundreds
help

 

[davel]

Maptech charts are exact copies of original paper charts (most for the UK are supplied by the hydro office) so the appearance will be very familiar to most of us. A Folio of maptech charts costs about £100 and they can be used with their own charting system or with some other systems. I use them with a product called OziExplorer (www.oziexplorer.com) which does everything I want from a real time plotting system and costs about £50 (much cheaper than Maptech's own version) Ozi also allows you to scan in your own paper charts which is cheap but time consuming.

The quality of Maptech charts on screen is excellent (much better than some of my home scanned charts). If you want to look before you buy, they provide a free copy of their viewing software and a couple of large scale charts (one of the UK and one of the Approaches to the Solent). You can pick up a copy from any chandler that sells their product or from their web site.

Dave L.