modern hi tec navigation and instrumentation

[John_Silver]

Found the ‘dividers’ function in Orca:

Press screen to drop a pin (centre screen, in black). This gives distance & bearing pop up. Plus…..



…..an option to ‘measure.’ Which, when selected, creates a similar facility to the Navionics dividers:



Playing with tides (accessed via the weather button, in the task bar), I can get granular hour by hour flow rate predictions. This was achieved by sliding through the timeline, to the left of the screen, whilst watching the point on the main screen that I’m interested in:





BUT, so far can’t find a way to get same granularity on tide height. This is shown (pale blue/green box bottom left) but not by the hour. Only high & low. Though there may be a way to switch the on-screen hourly data from flow to height……EDIT: The Orca chat bot says that hourly heights should be available, at the bottom of the weather box, on the free app. Not just High & Low. A human is due to e mail me back, once they have investigated why it isn’t.

And, one £45 sub does give access to all Orca charts. (V’s £50 per chart for post 25% price gouging increase Navionics).

Also discovered, whilst hunting for Orca user tips, that there appears to be a Raymarine / Orca tie up. Whereby Axioms and Orca synch across devices. In the way that Navionics plotters & apps can. But potentially without the need for annual renewal of plotter chart cards (which was the downfall of my previous, all Navionics, strategy). Haven’t investigated further because I’m all B&G. But worth knowing, if you have a Raymarine plotter; or are about to buy a new plotter.

 

[steve yates]

I like the look of the orca charts, especially for scotland.
But for down here in essex they don’t show the creek channels, which navionics does.
Eg, benfleet creek on canvey island, or faversham creek etc.
orca just shoes a mass of drying ground, whereas navionics shows the channels with dotted blue lines, and I have found them to be remarkably accurate.
Not, perhaps an issue for most fin keeled boats, but I like poking up these in my little lifting keel bradwell.
Fairly niche I know, but the all areas for one sub is a huge attraction with Orca and I might give it a try next time I head up to scotland.

On a slightly different note does anyone know if its possible to install antares on the orca tablet by the way?

If I ever get my longbow finished, the final job will be a new set of electronics and it looks like an orca core & big orca plotter/tablet with a raydome and ais transmitter added will pretty much give me everything I need for just under 5k ( half the value of the boat ffs! ) which looks a pretty good deal these days. I particularly like the big tablet version of the traditional chartplotter.
Or alternatively there is the onwa set up, which could possibly come in about 4k for similar but with smaller, fixed screen.
I already have a vhf with ais and an autohelm 4000 unit, nasa log & depth and steering compass.

 

[John_Silver]

I like the look of the orca charts, especially for scotland.
But for down here in essex they don’t show the creek channels, which navionics does.
Eg, benfleet creek on canvey island, or faversham creek etc.
orca just shoes a mass of drying ground, whereas navionics shows the channels with dotted blue lines, and I have found them to be remarkably accurate.
Not, perhaps an issue for most fin keeled boats, but I like poking up these in my little lifting keel bradwell.
Fairly niche I know, but the all areas for one sub is a huge attraction with Orca and I might give it a try next time I head up to scotland.

On a slightly different note does anyone know if its possible to install antares on the orca tablet by the way?

If I ever get my longbow finished, the final job will be a new set of electronics and it looks like an orca core & big orca plotter/tablet with a raydome and ais transmitter added will pretty much give me everything I need for just under 5k ( half the value of the boat ffs! ) which looks a pretty good deal these days. I particularly like the big tablet version of the traditional chartplotter.
Or alternatively there is the onwa set up, which could possibly come in about 4k for similar but with smaller, fixed screen.
I already have a vhf with ais and an autohelm 4000 unit, nasa log & depth and steering compass.

There’s an Orca Owners Club on FB, if no one here knows the answer re Antares. Sounds like this chap loaded it, on a Orca tablet, but experienced GPS conflict problems. Could be worth messaging…..



Might have to run the Antares on a second tablet? Selling it to yourself as redundancy?

 

[John_Silver]

More brownie points for Orca: The helpdesk does help! And Orca does show hourly tide spot heights (my Q in post #61). Here's how:



In chart view, select 'weather' from task bar, bottom left of screen. Circled in red.



This opens a box, which fills the left side of the screen. It has an hourly timeline across the top, extending several days out; plus, down the side, rows containing wind, wave, current and tide data. The tide info is at the bottom. In the box, only high & low is shown. Not hourly rise. BUT there is a task bar in the bottom right of the screen (which I had ignored). This gives the option to choose tide height (circled), [or current, wave, wind, weather}. That selection switches the data, displayed at the spot stations on the chart, from the default wind, to tide height or flow or wave weight etc. Scrolling across the timeline, in the box, alters the time on the chart spot display.

A handy discovery, coming as it does before my Navionics renewal anniversary. One Orca sub being cheaper than one Navionics sub, whilst offering access to all Orca charts. Where I need two Navionics subs to cover a much smaller cruising area. Three if I venture into the Baltic. With the ever present risk of a random Navionics lock out.

Wonder if an Orca Core would work, sticky-padded to the underside of the deck? In the switch panel.....where there's room to plug another connector straight onto the end of the N2k backbone......

The functionality of, and availability of support for, the Orca app is deeply impressive.

 

[Supertramp]

There’s an Orca Owners Club on FB, if no one here knows the answer re Antares. Sounds like this chap loaded it, on a Orca tablet, but experienced GPS conflict problems. Could be worth messaging…..

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Might have to run the Antares on a second tablet? Selling it to yourself as redundancy?

I have an old Raymarine plotter (with radar) but mainly use Navionics on a tablet. I have a second tablet for UKHO charts and Antares. I like having two separate units (3 with the Raymarine) especially when doing Antares things.

There can be a surprising amount of difference between Navionics, UKHO and Antares when at close quarters. Eyeballs essential.