Raymarine Plotter - Course up or Head up

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mark1882

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Hi

Any advice as to the merit of using either course up or head up on my Raymarine C90W plotter would be appreciated.

I normally use North up but my other half is finding this a bit of an issue when sailing south in particular when she would prefer to see he boat image on the plotter to facing the direction we are going. We have experimented a bit with both course up and head up options but I am not sure which one is best to use so any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Mark
 
Either North up (my preferred option) or head up, IMO. I like North up as it matches all the charts I have ever used and I prefer the boat to move rather than the land but I suppose it is all relative,
 
I prefer North up on the plotter as it matches the charts and what is in my head about where the islands are in relation to each other as pmg says.

For my AIS I use a separate display as I prefer to use that course up because it's then easy to visualise where the boats I can see on screen are in the real world in relation to my boat.

Richard
 
Chart - north up. SWMBO and I both find this orientation the most intuitive to use. We experimented with heading up and found the movement of the land confusing beyond words.

Radar - head up. This orientation we find is best as it lets you visualise where the target is by reference to the bow. The only exception to this is when we use the overlay feature on the chart, where we retain the north up setting.
 
I prefer radar as a seperate screen but with heads up. I use radar for moving targets such as boats so I want to know their position relative to me. If I was using radar for confirmation of hard rocky things I would use the overlay. Isn't technology great!
 
One factor on an E series with an upgraded Navionics chip was head up (1st officer prefers) the Raymarine kept freezing and rebooting as it couldn't cope with repositioning the chart as boat bearing changed with waves. Only fixed after updating software (only possible with 128Kb Scandisk chip!).

Not sure if this happens with C series.
 
I do worry when I see people using anything but North up, on road atlases in a car or charts on boats.....
 
The OP question was "course up or head up" he doesn't want North up.
I use head up. My plotter shows the projected course as an arrow from the boat's position.
As an aside... When the B747-400 was first introduced the Nav Screens were set to Course Up. I found this strange. When TCAS was fitted the displays were changed to Head Up which made a lot more sense and was easier to see the relative position of the other aircraft. TCAS...traffic collision avoidance system.
 
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jwilson said:
I do worry when I see people using anything but North up, on road atlases in a car or charts on boats.....
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don't worry about what other people do, just worry that the plotter is set how you want it.

I am of the north up persuasion and used to share your sense of "that makes me better". As an instructor that has watched many people navigate, I know now that that was misplaced and erroneous arrogance on my part.

It is true that more men than women prefer north up to course/head up. But it by no means a 100% split.

There is only one 100% preference that I have observed. That is ALL the fighter pilots that I have taught use head up. They can navigate well and quite quickly if they are still alive. If, after watching them, you still have a sense of superiority when using north up then so be it.

As to the OPs question which (foeu excepted) has been ignored, course up is better if using radar overlay as it stops the radar plot jittering around. Head up otherwise, unless, like me, you like north up.
 
Elessar said:
As to the OPs question which (foeu excepted) has been ignored, course up is better if using radar overlay as it stops the radar plot jittering around. Head up otherwise, unless, like me, you like north up.
Click to expand...

Long time since I tried course up and head up, but shouldn't the radar image be more stable in head up?
 
Head up. Sailing, Flying, Driving, Walking. What you see on the map is what you see out the window. But then I'm metricated too.

The E series used to perform like crap, lose itself and get all bitter and twisted if the screen offset was set to 1/3 ( 'boat' in the lower bottom centre of the screen ) but if you plonk it back in the middle it works fine.
 
foeu said:
The OP question was "course up or head up" he doesn't want North up.
Click to expand...

In that case I must admit to an error as I interpreted "course up" to mean "course over ground up" and "head up" to mean "heading up" and the only difference between those in the Med is the leeway when sailing and zero difference when motoring so it makes no real difference which you use. However, having thought about this since Foeu's post I can see that where there are tides and tidal streams there will be a difference between the two.

Richard
 
RichardS said:
In that case I must admit to an error as I interpreted "course up" to mean "course over ground up" and "head up" to mean "heading up" and the only difference between those in the Med is the leeway when sailing and zero difference when motoring so it makes no real difference which you use. However, having thought about this since Foeu's post I can see that where there are tides and tidal streams there will be a difference between the two.
Click to expand...

It's not just the difference between heading and track. When using radar, course-up is somewhat stabilised so that things (other vessels, buoys, land) stay in the same place on the screen. Only when you make a positive alteration of course do they shuffle round to their new relative positions. With basic unstabilised head-up, everything is swaying around as you go up and down waves.

Pete
 
My plotter has a trendy oblong screen, so head or course up for radar will often given the poorest view. Personally, I worry about people who can't orientate themselves to north up with a chart. My last plotter was in portrait format, so I used course up with radar. I only set it up to head up for the chart occasionally to annoy my wife. It was unusable because the writing was rotated too but the letters stayed horizontal.
 
Elessar said:
don't worry about what other people do, just worry that the plotter is set how you want it.

I am of the north up persuasion and used to share your sense of "that makes me better". As an instructor that has watched many people navigate, I know now that that was misplaced and erroneous arrogance on my part.

It is true that more men than women prefer north up to course/head up. But it by no means a 100% split.

There is only one 100% preference that I have observed. That is ALL the fighter pilots that I have taught use head up. They can navigate well and quite quickly if they are still alive. If, after watching them, you still have a sense of superiority when using north up then so be it.

As to the OPs question which (foeu excepted) has been ignored, course up is better if using radar overlay as it stops the radar plot jittering around. Head up otherwise, unless, like me, you like north up.
Click to expand...

Spot on in my opinion - one of those 'old ways are always the best ways' fallacies. But I've recently been converted to course up. For me head up can be a bit crazy with the land constantly moving on the screen but in course up the screen matches the view forward if I'm on course.
 
An opinion, take it or leave it...
Leaving out radar, the choice is North Up or Heading Up. What is used will depend upon the physical position of the chartplotter.
If the plotter can be seen from the helm then Heading Up makes sense, since the screen describes the World around you in the same orientation. I have never found course up to be helpful and in my case the chartplotter show the predicted course anyway.
However if you are looking at an electronic chart below or at home then North Up makes perfect sense, since it's an electronic presentation of a familiar chart.
I have a plotter visible from the helm set to heading up, a Hudl2 below set to North Up, a wandering iPad set to North up but the charts on my iPhone are set to heading up.....useful if caught out in fog in the tender-- it has happened.
Heading up can make the chart jump around at times, but I can accept that.
 
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