On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 08:53:23 GMT, ray lunder wrote:

Ahoy, I finally got the NOAA charts downloaded. Using Fugawi software
the bottom details are practically useless. Is this a user setting?
Fault with the software or basic detail lacking from the charts
themselves? It's nothing like the hardcopy charts of my area. Thank
you and keep up the good work.

Sounds like you downloaded the new ENC vector charts. They have
different "layers" of information and it takes some getting used to.

I believe that Fugawi also supports the old style raster charts which
can also be downloaded for free. The raster charts look exactly like
the corresponding paper charts.

There are pros and cons to both types but vector charts have a steeper
learning curve in my experience.

On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 09:46:18 GMT, ray lunder
wrote:

Is there a specific file extension you look for in downloaded files
for raster charts? Where do you download them from. Thanks again.

NOAA refers to them as RNC charts (as opposed to ENCs). You can get
them he

http://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/Raster/download.htm

My recollection is that they come down as ".zip" files that have to be
unpacked and reorganized before you can use them. Eventually they end
up as ".bsb" and ".kap" file extensions. There are folks on the web
selling DVDs that have everything already unpacked. Here's one that I
have bookmarked but there are others:

http://www.chartsdvd.com/