The end of paper charts is nigh!

[Chiara’s slave]

I’m just off to the boat, see you later.

 

[capnsensible]

If you can't passage plain on a plotter im not sure how you manage with chart .
my complaints about plotters aslys been , its makes is so easy for someone who not learn how to navigate that its brought alsorts of novices out on he water.

The shortfalls of satellites is now becoming apparent.

 

[capnsensible]

Does anyone else here have a GPS that can use more than one system?

If so, how reliable do you find the position given?

Should give the new term I suppose, GNSS.

 

[davidpbo]

A few years ago I was speaking to a chap in Shelter Bay, Panama. He was having to replace every electronic piece of kit he had on board due to a lightning strike. The delivery process was not swift.....

Our house's chimney & TV aerial was hit by lighting, we had to replace all electronics that was plugged in at the time.

 

[Chiara’s slave]

Which one.

The shortfalls of satellites is now becoming apparent.

The shortfalls have always been obvious. I carry paper charts, and trained in the era when it was vital to know how to use them, and how to navigate without satellite systems. I can still do that. I still actually do that. I alsohave an advanced plotter. It‘s 2 years old, the charts are new. I love it.

 

[sailaboutvic]

Like many here I too learned to navigate by charts actually when I started sailing there was no GPS let alone plotters, RDF where all the rage.
It was all paper, rule rubber, pencil.
But there no doubt when your being tossed about at 45d it's much easier to look at a chart plotter or in our case an tablet then going down below and hanging on for dear life trying to work out your next course .
The issue isn't chart plotters or GPS , the issue is people who never learn the skills how to navigate on paper or even work out tides
We returned back to the UK after 13 years cruising and I over heard someone asking someone in the sailing club as they where looking at a chart hung on the wall ,what was the diamonds for? His mate said he had no idea they will goggle it later.
I did think they where in a small sailing dinghy,
It turned out They was on a 40 foot westerly.
By the way we do have a chart plotter too but the charts for a small area as stupid money,
Where you can get a much larger area on a tablet, IPad for very little money and it be the same as you find on the expensive plotter.

 

[Birdseye]

If you can't passage plain on a plotter im not sure how you manage with chart .
my complaints about plotters aslys been , its makes is so easy for someone who not learn how to navigate that its brought alsorts of novices out on he water.

Maybe but I said its much better to do so on a chart. You cant really compare planning on an 8 inch screen and a full size chart of maybe 50 inches ( I havent got one to measure here at home). With a tablet you have to keep zooming in and out to see the detail, panning back and fore across the screen, measurement of distances is more complicated.

From a childhood of Swallows and Amazons through to years of teaching nav to YM candidates I have always loved maps and charts. I agree with you that its best that all novices ( and we all start as novices) learn to use paper charts first of all. Going straight to plotters is a bit like kids learning maths from calculators

 

[dunedin]

But almost all modern ‘gps’ devices use all the available sat nav systems.

But all rely on very weak radio signals from satellites - hence all very easily jammed, accidentally (by weather or other malfunctioning equipment) or maliciously

 

[sailaboutvic]

Personally I don't have a problem doing long passage planning on my ipad,
Last one I did was just over 2 months ago Plymouth to Calais with one stop at Gosport only because we encountered a problem ,
Calais stright to Vlissingen.
Calais to Vlissingen had some tricky planning,
That's not to say the other one didn't.
I had no more problems doing that on my ipad had I did it on a chart.
Agreed there was lots zoom in .
We now been cruising the inland waters in Netherlands and I did buy some local chart because I was concern the E sea charts they may not be so reliable in the inland rivers and canals
the info on the charts are so small I have to use a M glass ,
I've stop using them as I found my E chart have the same info.
And much more handy to have in front of me then having to go below with so much traffic about .
Most people do around 20 to 30 Mile's in a day so it's a very small distance to plot even with some where like the east coast with its sand banks.
We was doing at time trip of 50 hours and still manage to do them on a ipad.
Many people,d use open CPN on laptop again no problems .

 

[AntarcticPilot]

But all rely on very weak radio signals from satellites - hence all very easily jammed, accidentally (by weather or other malfunctioning equipment) or maliciously

Jamming for military exercises is common in some parts of the UK, and the big transmitter 93 million miles away can do a pretty good job when it feels like it. Not to mention more local effects when a car thief or a moonlighting lorry driver wants to kill vehicle tracking for nefarious reasons. As you say, the signal strength is minute, so it's no big trick.

Thinking about it, I wouldn't be surprised if an electric motor or generator with worn brushes could interfere with GNSS locally by sparking and generating broad-band RFI. Has anyone seen that?

 

[obmij]

If GNSS is out of action for some reason then most ENC's will enter dead reckoning mode (ECDIS will anyway). If your plotter doesn't then you will as you will still have you electronic chart and presumably a last position & can navigate as you would with paper. If you have radar then so much the better. Not sure what others do but I use radar to confirm my GPS fix. When combined with an electronic chart radar is rock solid.

Astro doesn't require a paper chart. You get a fix which you can plot onto electronic or paper.

If you electronics bank goes down & all you see is blank screens (it happens) & you've Vardeyed your phone then again you will have a fix from your logged last position / speed etc. You'll presumably have a written passage plan whether navigating with paper or ENCS so just lock onto that.

I like paper charts, they are beautiful. I spend hours correcting them & will regret their demise. I don't use them for practical navigation though.

 

[st599]

Jamming for military exercises is common in some parts of the UK, and the big transmitter 93 million miles away can do a pretty good job when it feels like it. Not to mention more local effects when a car thief or a moonlighting lorry driver wants to kill vehicle tracking for nefarious reasons. As you say, the signal strength is minute, so it's no big trick.

Thinking about it, I wouldn't be surprised if an electric motor or generator with worn brushes could interfere with GNSS locally by sparking and generating broad-band RFI. Has anyone seen that?

GPS signals are lower than the noise floor. You can only find and decipher them because you know what the signal looks like. Anything that adds noise at the right frequency or a new, higher power, fake GPS signal will make it impossible.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

GPS signals are lower than the noise floor. You can only find and decipher them because you know what the signal looks like. Anything that adds noise at the right frequency or a new, higher power, fake GPS signal will make it impossible.

That's what I thought, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with the details of the implementation to say it authoritatively! The maths of the position fixing isn't terribly hard in principle - the devil, as usual, is in the detail (you have to deal with an ellipsoidal earth model, which is "fun" to say the least!) and the various edge cases, but the principles are straightforward. But the electronics are another matter entirely, and are devilishly clever!

The bottom line is that GNSS are VERY delicate systems, that can be knocked off their perch ridiculously easily. That's why the military jam them during exercises - they can't rely on it being available during a war! In practice they are highly reliable - but there's an intrinsic fragility that natural or artificial sources of interference can easily break.

Most of our chart-plotters, unlike ECDIS systems, are utterly dependent on GNSS. I don't think there's any way on either of mine (of different, well-known, reputable makes) to input a ship's position using external position fixing techniques; if there is it's deep down in some unexplored menu, probably marked "Here be Dragons"! And it would be possible but difficult to (for example) lay off a three-point fix.

Our chart-plotters are a) mostly located in a position convenient for use underway and b) have tiny screens - a big one is only about 30cm across. A chart can be laid flat on a table with at least 50cm square visible, and probably more like 60 or 70 cm by 50cm. It's simple and straightforward to use a chart for pencil and paper position fixing; it's difficult if it's possible at all to do the equivalent process on a chart-plotter.

Charts and chart-plotters do different things; they are NOT equivalent. And ECDIS systems on ships are another thing entirely; they have capabilities that our chart-plotters don't, so comparisons with them are not valid in our situation.

I wonder if there's a market for a low-cost yacht Inertial Navigation System? That would provide independent position fixing for chart-plotters etc, but of course, is only as good as the last fix that it was given. In normal use it would be updated periodically with a GPS position, but if GPS was unavailable, it would give a position whose accuracy slowly degraded with time - but which would be far more accurate than DR! I've seen such a system in action a long time ago, and it drifted about 50-100m in an hour. That was in the 70s, so I guess it would be better with more modern technology, as well as being smaller using solid-state ring-laser gyros.

 

[st599]

GPSJam GPS/GNSS Interference Map

Looks like Cyprus and Malta are both jammed at the moment.

 

[capnsensible]

GPSJam GPS/GNSS Interference Map

Looks like Cyprus and Malta are both jammed at the moment.

Interesting site, ta.

 

[capnsensible]

 

[glynd]

Wondering if the RYA will redo 'Chart 3 & Chart 4' to Imray style, given they'll be the only paper charts you can get in the future

 

[dunedin]

If GNSS is out of action for some reason then most ENC's will enter dead reckoning mode (ECDIS will anyway). If your plotter doesn't then you will as you will still have you electronic chart and presumably a last position & can navigate as you would with paper. If you have radar then so much the better. Not sure what others do but I use radar to confirm my GPS fix. When combined with an electronic chart radar is rock solid.

Astro doesn't require a paper chart. You get a fix which you can plot onto electronic or paper.

If you electronics bank goes down & all you see is blank screens (it happens) & you've Vardeyed your phone then again you will have a fix from your logged last position / speed etc. You'll presumably have a written passage plan whether navigating with paper or ENCS so just lock onto that.

I like paper charts, they are beautiful. I spend hours correcting them & will regret their demise. I don't use them for practical navigation though.

Yacht plotters are very differnt from (super expensive) ship ECDIS.

As far as I am aware (and I think the RIN concern), no leisure systems allow manual /nonGNSS navigation methods. If the GOs fix goes most lose the last known position and just give a warning message. Generally no easy way to plot a series of bearings etc, like on a paper chart.

And whilst some yachts have radar, suspect the percentage is moderate low and decreasing. Radar is a lot more expensive than paper charts were.

 

[Wansworth]

Paper charts,bank accounts,bills,anything to save money for someone saying nothing to worry about,until it is.I am keeping my charts and my pencil

 

[WindyWindyWindy]

Yacht plotters are very differnt from (super expensive) ship ECDIS.
...
Generally no easy way to plot a series of bearings etc, like on a paper chart.

There's no reason why such features should be expensive though.

You normally have a track as a position history but it'd be useful to have timed gaps like hourly markers for instance.