Jack Painter wrote:

snip
I have
always thought that commercial weather products might eventually eliminate
the need for the US government to duplicate and compete with the private
market in this area. But the price of this package, using information that
the provider has little if any cost in obtaining, is not competitive in my
opinion.

Who is duplicating who? I don't know where that weather data on that
system comes from but if it is generated with data from government
systems funded by tax Dollars it would seem that the extra costs are for
getting the data embellished, packaged, and delivered.

If there is reasonable (i.e., free or cheap) public access to the same
basic data the "private market" is using, I wouldn't want the government
to abdicate to the private market product. That would be a disservice
to the taxpayer who does not want to pay for the various bells and
whistles and/or alternate delivery paths that make it attractive to others.

As far as competitive, if you want to use that every day and amortize
the hardware and subscription costs over three years, that service would
add a little less than $4.00 per day to the operating costs of a boat.
And I assume you can use it all you want for that.

Four bucks a day is a drop in the bucket compared to the other operating
costs in a boat that would typically want something like this. And if
you want to run from bad weather, it could easily be worth $4 a day to
know which way to run.

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jacker at midmaine dot com