Notices to Mariners Week 40

[tillergirl]

Bit early this week but I am in France earning sailing vouchers Sunday to Tuesday so as there a couple of Temporary Notices already available I thought I would do this in two parts this week (if you'll forgive me).

So no Permanent notices available yet but in Temporary ther is notice that:

1. Work on Bradwell Baffle Wall removal starts on Thursday, 6th October and a 150 m exclusion zone will be created. No sign that this will be marked but it deserves our total support as there will be divers working on the seabed. It will require yachts to avoid going shore side of the bafffle wall (no hardship) and keeping well clear (150m clear) of the eastern end in particular when approaching the Bradwell Beacon to enter the Creek. An approach from due north of the Beacon is required.

2. Further work in preparation for Phase two of the London Gateway project involving spud pontoons working at the bund with a barge named 'Snow White'. Someone's got a sense of humour!. We already have advice to keep to the other side of the River Thames at this point.

3. Notification of a Firework Display in Gravesend Reach on Friday, 4th November from a PLA vessel.

I'll try to do the usual update Monday evening from France but forgive me if it does not get done until Wednesday morning.

Incidentally, there are chartlets of Mersea Quarters and Tollesbury, North and South Channels added to the downloads page of both ECS and CTTE

 

[FullCircle]

Thanks Roger.

I really must get round to turning those chartlets into something my OpenCPN chartplotter package can read.

 

[tillergirl]

What formats can OpenCPN read? I might be able to do soemthing at the production stage.

 

[FullCircle]

What formats can OpenCPN read? I might be able to do soemthing at the production stage.

Here it is in full Roger. From the OpenCPN website.

http://opencpn.org/drupal/

Supported Formats


BSB Versions 1, 2 and 3, with chart files ending with ".kap".

BSB Version 4 , with chart files ending with ".cap", works with a non free plugin, for Windows only. See the Plugins Download Page.

NOS/GEO Version 1, with chart files ending with ".nos" and ".geo". (Subsequent versions are probably supported but need to be tested. However, this format is obsolete for new charts.)

NV Verlag's charts, with chart files ending with ".eap", are supported through a non free plugin, for Windows only.

CM93 Version 2.
(C-map Version 3, and later, is in a preprocessed proprietary SENC format and is not supported.)

S57/S52 (ENC), with chart files ending with ".000".
OpenCPNs internal SENC files has a ".S57" file extension.

If a chart is said to be a S57 Vector chart, and has a different file ending, it is likely to be a SENC file, a processed version of a ".000" chart file, in a proprietary, platform specific format, that OpenCPN can't handle.

Formats, that with some effort, can be used.

Generally chart pictures in gif, jpeg, pdf, png, tif, bmp and other formats can be used, when properly geo-referenced, to generate KAP file (BSB / RNC) that OpenCPN can display. For the details about this process see the chart thread in the forum. Also, make sure to browse around the forum as there are a handful of other interesting chart related threads.

WCI charts generated with SeaClear and MapCal can also be transformed to BSB charts and used by OpenCPN. The key is to open a WCI chart in MapCal and convert it to a BMP picture, and then transform this picture to a tiff file, using for example ImageMagic. More about using MapCal, a part of SeaClear, for chart conversions, is available here.

OziExplorer charts consisting of picture in one of the standard formats, together with a georeferencing ".map" file, can be converted to a bsb kapfile. A Ruby script for this conversion is available here. Ozi charts of the ozfx2 or ozfx3 format can not be converted with this tool. These Ozi formats are not documented and proprietary, and cannot be displayed in OpenCPN.

Before Maptech started to produce BSB charts the HDR format was used in the late eighties to mid nineties. These charts consists of many picture tiles in pcx format, more than 100 tiles is not unusual. The tiles can be merged to one picture and then used as any other picture to make an OpenCPN compatible chart. For details on this process see the Chart Conversion Manual and this post and the following posts in the forum. A script for merging the pcx tiles to one picture is available here.

The HDR format is from an era when computer-memory and processing power were less powerful than today, as a consequence these charts are not of the same quality as more modern charts. Furthermore, most of these charts are not using WGS84 as reference datum. These charts should not be the first choice, but can be useful if nothing else is available.
Other formats that are not supported.

S63 Encrypted ENC is not supported. This is the format for the majority of newly produced vector charts from many national hydrographic offices. S63 charts are exactly the same as S57 except the they are encrypted to keep them from being illegally distributed.

The Hydrographic Chart Raster Format, HCRF, used by the United Kingdom Hydrographic Offices' ARCS (Admiralty Raster Chart Service), Australian Hydrographic Services' Seafarer products and the NZMariner, New Zealands Official charts, are not supported. This is also due to proprietary encryption algorithms and copyright issues.

Mapmedia's, Navionics and various other chart formats are not supported, for the same reasons as for the other proprietary charts.



The forum chart thread referenced is:

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f134/

 

[FullCircle]

Found the right thread....


http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f134/charts-31346.html

 

[tillergirl]

Umm (scratches head). I have no software that can geo-reference my images. I think I followed that thread and there is some scary stuff (for me) there.

I'll have another think about it later in the week when I'm back.

Thanks Jim.