On Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:16:29 -0700, Josh Assing
wrote:

As some of you know; I was looking at buying a sailboat -- well; the survey went
fine but the owner thanked me for sharing the results with him and has backed
out. I feel like I was used to get a 'free survey' -- so we're keeping our boat
& we'll keep looking.

One of the things I've long wanted to do was put a fluxgate compass on the boat
-- at slow speeds the gps "heading" tends to waiver -- which is not good in the
fog when I'm trying to coordinate ais data with the radar display (two seperate
units)

I seem to have 4 options
1) Really expensive compass (2,000+)
2) SimRad RFC35 ($400)
3) Nasa compass sensor (I have only found it in the UK for $170)
4) Azimuth 1000 ($300)

I like having a standard non-powered compass; but the azimuth is readily
avaliable and outputs nmea data.
I've read a lot about the simrad not being able to get usable nmea data out
So I think I"m going with the Nasa compass; unless someone has some thoughts.

Thanks
-josh

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=183

You can no doubt find one elsewhere for less. This is also an
excellent handheld GPS and chartplooter. It's waterproof, and it
FLOATS.

They make a little slide in bracket if you want to mount it somewhere.
I have one loaded with bluecharts and road maps for my area. When I go
ashore, I take it with me. It even has addressses and phones for
restaurants, stores, services, etc.

This would also mean you have a spare GPS on board, which is never a
bad idea.