Urgent ais info required.

BAtoo said:
:D :D

Or use No1 eyeball instead of AIS.......:D :D
Click to expand...

Could that be someone who has never been approaching a busy TSS in fog or at night with a confusing string of heavies coming at you and wondering when to make a dash for it?

Having been targeted by a 33 knot ferry only 1nm away I was very happy to have the AIS-supplied name and MMSI to call up on VHF.

Crisimage02.jpg
 
Barnac1e said:
Could that be someone who has never been approaching a busy TSS in fog or at night with a confusing string of heavies coming at you and wondering when to make a dash for it?

Having been targeted by a 33 knot ferry only 1nm away I was very happy to have the AIS-supplied name and MMSI to call up on VHF.
Click to expand...

It could be but its not...:)

Many North Sea & Channel crossings and deliveries; mostly as Skipper !!

Not wishing to start a "when I was a boy" drift - my early crossing were always No1 eyeball as we had little else - DR, RDF & Dcca if you remember those???
 
BAtoo said:
It could be but its not...:)

Many North Sea & Channel crossings and deliveries; mostly as Skipper !!

Not wishing to start a "when I was a boy" drift - my early crossing were always No1 eyeball as we had little else - DR, RDF & Dcca if you remember those???
Click to expand...
Yes, very well. Decca was out of the question for small yachts and impecunious owners but I made my own RDF receiver (a transistor radio with rewound LW RF coil, mounted in a wooden pelorus), which was my only navigational aid other than the standard lead-line, compass and charts when I was crossing the North Sea every year from Whitby to IJmuiden in my own boat during the late 1960s to the mid 1970s, until I moved to the Med.

Most of the time I was somewhat lost, despite my DR being quite respectable. I always deliberately aimed high for the Dutch coast for when the low coastline appeared I knew to turn right until meeting something to identify. Coming back was much easier, Flamborough Head and its light was unmistakable from a great distance and always appeared bang on course on the port bow.

My point was that I wouldn't want to go back to those pre-GPS and AIS days and, although they are still only aids, they are an enormous boost to safety at sea.

Edit:
Despite the apparent attempt at the last word in a pi§ing contest, I can go back even further to my air force days of using LORAN-C - now there was a clumsy system.
And with reference to my home-made RDF and to prove it really worked, here is an excerpt from my 1972 narrative log after lying a-hull for 17 hours in a BF9 SW gale some eight hours from departing Den Helder bound for Whitby:
"I resorted to our RDF receiver to get a fix - it was a remarkably small cocked hat result from three beacons, placing us just about in the centre of the North Sea with Whitby due west some 100nm distant. We had drifted 42 miles north-east from our dead reckoning position before taking down all sail, an average leeway drift of 2.5 knots while lying a-hull."​
 
Last edited:
Many thanks for all the advice!!
I have ordered the adapter from ebay but willl also download the NASA Manual just to see what they said about the adapter. I think they offered one at quite a few bob and possibly it is just a standard adapter.
I esecially wanted the AIS to work as non of us have done a channel crossing before and I had promised ( and demonstrated ) AIS to the nervous crew. we were crossing from the IOW area and our first few ours would be in darkness with ferries dashing around.
As a last minute fix I bought the little NASA package with screen so that we would have at least something.
But now read my new thread ( coming soon ) concerning our departure to France!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top