Paper charts are dead

Re: An interesting thought

That's me. No central heating, log fires. And I'd never go to hospital, don't trust the quacks, never mind x-rays, I went to med school, and know what sort of people they try to train. Though my car doesn't have an magneto unfortunately

Love gps and plotter though! <sigh>

<hr width=100% size=1>There is no such thing as "fun for the whole family."
 
Re: To Beneteau ......

<<The update service for paper charts is free, should we not be campaigning for free electronic updates?>>

The free information in the updates applies to both paper AND electronic charts. Updating paper charts is only free if you do the work yourself, updating electronic costs money because you are in effect paying someone else to do the work. However you can add symbols with C-Map (I don't have experience of others), these include buoys and a cross (X), so it is possible to X out a buoy in one position and insert it somewhere else. Last summer for example we put in symbols for 5 temporary oceanographic W Channel buoys on C-Map, then deleted them without trace after they were removed. Lights that change are best noted (like they are in the add-on sheets of Imray charts which we use) and then if required look up the latest characteristics in the Lights list - post-it notes by the plotter are reminders prepared pre-passage.

Realistically, 90% of corrections are ignorable, being depth changes that make no difference, or things that affect areas that are so far off your track or whatever they are of no interest. I read the corrections in PBO, look at Imrays website and print off corrections, then make notes of any that are of REAL interest. If I can add them to C-Map, I will (like the Ushant TSS changes last year) using the C-Map symbols, otherwise they get onto the paper notes for the passage ie Le Four Lt now ...... etc.

I do no less and no more than I did (or do) with paper charts, in either case if significantly concerned I would buy a new chart (paper) or have the cartridge updated (C-Map).




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Re: An interesting thought

Hi,

Having been in electronics, I like so many other people with this background, know that like any gadget technical, it will breake eventually. While the "intelligent" or active components in use today hardly ever fail, it is usually capacitors or similar passive components that fail. When they fail, they then cause the active components to blow.

Furthermore, the Chinese openly (and I believe the Russians a little more covertly) develop now little killer satellites and a type of limpet mine system to be attached to comms satellites to take out the guidance system of the enemy.

When this happens, a working sextant and a paperchart abd the ability to use it, will be more valuable than your boat when you are mid-atlantic.

Whether your system fails or the whole system crashes, it is not if, but when.

Long live my astrolabe as a last resource accuracy hardly better than one degree, but still.

regards ongolo

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Re: An interesting thought

Your sextant will only be of any use if you have a rated, set chronograph. Last figure I saw 98% of yachtsmen used the GPS time as their time source.

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Re: An interesting thought

You misread me. I always carry paper charts and the associated equipment. However what was my primary navigation system has now become my back upsystem. The question that I was asking, was when in the future would yachties be able to dump their paper charts? We need advances in hardware reliability, and would need more thatn one plotter, but this will probably soon be possible. After all we trust our life to electronic systems almost daily. Have you ever flown in a commercial airliner for example?

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Re: An interesting thought

BBC time signal on 10.000MHz GMT world wide.

regards ongolo


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Holistic approaches

I would suggest that ALL charts, birds, swell, smells are part of the craft of navigation.
Paper charts aren't dead, they've been supplemented by a far more accurate and easy-to-use plotter + electronic charts.

I'd agree that the vector chart is likely to supercede raster configuration, but what else is there in the pipeline which will make vector charting as obsolescent as the lodestone.

Each advance in the instruments of navigation add to the corpus of knowledge, it's an arrogant or foolish(?) seaman who throws out the proven old and relies entirely on the new.

It's unlikely that one will be bu**ered by the failure of your electronics - a far more likely catastrophe is the loss of your specs.

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Thanks to everyone for the V interesting discussion /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

This would be a great topic for an article or two in the boaty mags. Hope JJ has taken note of the number of posts and level of interest!


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Re: And if your electrics are down

Hi charles,

Tune in on exactly 10,000MHz. you will hear a clicking sound, that is the seconds ticking, on the full minute, you will hear a tone, and in 10?? minute or 15?? minute intervalls a female anounces the time, and then again click, click, click....

Another possible source is BBC world service on 15.400MHz for instance, where I believe the time comes from te same source, but the clicking sound has been replaced by short beeps and the long beep will indicate the precise time that gets announced either before or after.

regards ongolo

Ps. I can hear it and I am 10000km away, so I dont see a reason why you should not be able to hear it.

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Re: And if your electrics are down

I do hope that these radio time signals are not transmitted by electronic means!! :)

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I never thought of this:

How do submarines navigate (electronically) whilst submerged?
How do they pick up the satalites?
Is it by Inertial Navigation?

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Re: Most PC charting

Obviously you are limited to marking a PC based chart unlss your plotter has Marks capability.

I prefer PC + usb drive stick or CD .... with frequent use charts on the hard drive for quicker load-up. Normally the pc will store your marks in a separate directory to the chart and can in fact cross charts to put the mark on each chart showing same location .... but not all software will do this.

C-Map has been rated as one of the best in the electronic field as it literally seamlessly scrolls across the world - unlike most others such as Maptech etc. that show borders such as a normal chart etc. C-Map NT is a limited info version of full CMap93 etc. but on cartridge etc.

So I cannot answer for all packages - but know that I can mark all my charts on my software - effectively correcting them.

Having corrected proper adm. charts on ships for donkeys years - I am glad to not have to do it hours after hours !!!!


<hr width=100% size=1>Nigel ...
So WHAT does the EU really stand for ????/forums/images/icons/cool.gif
 
Re: Vector data

Raster is a scan of a complete chart and vector is a build up of many layers and small segment areas.

There is a good little program available to view each segment of Vector C-map charts ...... you will then see that the actual piece or file is only a tiny section of the overal chart it compares to in raster form. I would not like to guess how many segments a chart is broken down to in C-map form - nut suffuce to say it is considerable number ....

But the beauty is that c-map as a vector seamlessly scrolls across the segments and you are not aware of the file jump to next file etc.

That is why you appear to have smaller files for vector - but area for area vector due to its layers and extra info over and above raster files is bigger.
Blimey its not only me that says it - the authors themselves on some of the sites do as well.


<hr width=100% size=1>Nigel ...
So WHAT does the EU really stand for ????/forums/images/icons/cool.gif
 
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