I recently went sailing with a friend who has a 54' Swan. He's not very
electronic savy. At one point his wife was at the helm and asked me for
help interperting the display on the chartplotter. He had it set up for a
North-up display, and we were headed SW, which made the display confusing
for his wife. I switched it to heading-up and she immediately understood
what she was looking at. When the husband returned to the helm, he asked
me to switch it back.

Yesterday he stopped by the house and I questioned why he had the display
orientated that way. He said that

(1) He sails with two individuals who are in the CG, one of whom commands
an ice breaker. He claims that's the way that the CG operates all of their
displays, and if that's the way that the CG operates, there must be a
reason.

(2) He wants to keep his radar display and chartplotter synchronized, so
they're both in N-up mode.

(3) Some piece of navigation software that he runs on a PC down below only
does N-up, so he wants to keep them the same.

I argued that N-up isn't intuitive. It's fine for plotting courses, but
when I'm at the helm, I want the display to match what I'm seeing. It was
obvious from the reaction of his wife that she felt that heading-up was
more intuitive. I can't imagine that there's an issue with the radar (a
Furuno) as keeping that in N-up takes a lot computing power than heading-
up.

I also noted that when he was at the helm, that he kept scrolling the
display to see what was ahead of him as he rarely kept the boat centered on
the display. I explained that he could have the chartplotter position the
boat so that it was at the bottom 1/3 of the display and then would have
the top 2/3 of the dislay to show what was ahead. That didn't pulse him.

Personally I like to have my display in configured in course-up mode when
navigating to waypoints and in heading-up when I'm simply driving the boat.
I also configure it as described in the above paragraph to maximize my view
of what's ahead.

How do others have their displays configured? How does the CG have their's
configured? What's the purpose of N-up vs heading-up?

-- Geoff
www.GeoffSchultz.org

I would say that this is a personal preference type of thing. Since
the CG is a military organization, only the top brass gets to have a
preference, and everybody gets to be trained to do it that way.

I prefer north up because when you turn the boat, the chart plotter
doesn't change around. But you need a really good "boat" symbol drawn
on the screen that shows the heading very clearly.

Either way can be "intuitive" if it matches how you think it should
work.

1) You want to watch a boat symbol Use North up
wander around the electronic chart.

2) You want to look at the world like Use Heading up
you have x-ray vision.

Training and practice is the way to make either way work for you. Also
teach each person how to check the mode and change to their
preference.

Todd Smith
3S

wrote in message
...
I would say that this is a personal preference type of thing. Since
the CG is a military organization, only the top brass gets to have a
preference, and everybody gets to be trained to do it that way.

I prefer north up because when you turn the boat, the chart plotter
doesn't change around. But you need a really good "boat" symbol drawn
on the screen that shows the heading very clearly.

Either way can be "intuitive" if it matches how you think it should
work.

1) You want to watch a boat symbol Use North up
wander around the electronic chart.

2) You want to look at the world like Use Heading up
you have x-ray vision.

Training and practice is the way to make either way work for you. Also
teach each person how to check the mode and change to their
preference.

Todd Smith
3S
I concur with Todd. Having the flexibility to change the orientation of the
boat is convenient. When I am in a familiar area I prefer to use Heading
up. In my case all instruments are mounted in the (Raymarine) cockpit
facing the pedestal compass and the Wheel. By looking at the magnetic
compass I can validate the ECompass and if needed apply the necessary
correction to the autopilot. When inside the cabin we use the Power
Squadron technique on paper charts.

On Jun 4, 4:02 am, Geoff Schultz wrote:
... How do others have their displays configured? How does the CG have their's
configured? What's the purpose of N-up vs heading-up?
....
Just to add a confused point of view, I keep my radar in course up
mode and my electronic charts in N up mode. My radar can do N up but
it uses a non-gyro compass for this and I find it adds errors to have
it hunting around. When I look at the PPI I can guess when we on
heading and take my bearings as we swing past. Course up also makes
plotting on the screen possible. Transfer plotting is better but with
only two folks on board it's rare that we have the time. Box boats
these days are running in excess of 20 knots at sea... Time
flies...

The electronic charts I use are on a computer that I keep at the nav
station. There all the charts, paper and "e" are north up and there
is no confusion. On the e-charts the computer plots my boat, draws an
arrow to along my future course and leaves "bread crumbs" along my
wake... I've never found orientation to be a problem. Though, lots
of places we've been the electronic charts are in excess of a mile out
of WGS and in many locals are not correctable. So, we're not in the
habit of piloting by e-chart alone.

I'm not sure how much cred I'd give some hear-say about how The Coast
Guard does something. There's lots of misinformation out there.
There is the possibility that the CG is using different (and typically
outdated) technology. There's the possibility that only some of them
do it a certain way. And, of course, doing it their way w/o their
training is silly. If the crew can't make it work it's the wrong
system.

-- Tom.

Geoff Schultz wrote:
....

How do others have their displays configured? How does the CG have their's
configured? What's the purpose of N-up vs heading-up?


My wife and I have this same discussion over the chartplotter, and the
car GPS. She favors "Track Up" while I favor "Course Up" for situation
where we're following a constrained course, and "North Up" when we're in
open situations.

I have always used a chart as my primary tool, and a small screen GPS
chartplotter for location. Last year I upgraded to a nicer Garmin 545,
so I'm finding I have to rethink the way I navigate.

This reminds me of a situation many years ago delivering a Folkboat from
New York to Boston. The owner and I had a "navigational disagreement"
and in the aftermath we realize that we visualized the situation
completely differently. He "placed himself" at water level, and
oriented using various range lines, whereas I "raised myself up" to a
birds-eye view where I could create a map in my mind. Each method has
its own limitations and is prone to different types of errors.

jeff wrote:
Geoff Schultz wrote:
...

How do others have their displays configured? How does the CG have
their's configured? What's the purpose of N-up vs heading-up?


My wife and I have this same discussion over the chartplotter, and the
car GPS. She favors "Track Up" while I favor "Course Up" for situation
where we're following a constrained course, and "North Up" when we're in
open situations.

I have always used a chart as my primary tool, and a small screen GPS
chartplotter for location. Last year I upgraded to a nicer Garmin 545,
so I'm finding I have to rethink the way I navigate.

This reminds me of a situation many years ago delivering a Folkboat from
New York to Boston. The owner and I had a "navigational disagreement"
and in the aftermath we realize that we visualized the situation
completely differently. He "placed himself" at water level, and
oriented using various range lines, whereas I "raised myself up" to a
birds-eye view where I could create a map in my mind. Each method has
its own limitations and is prone to different types of errors.

I think that this has to do with the way we orient ourselves in the
spatial world. Some people are "North up" and some are "Heading up."
No right or wrong, just what works for you.

I suspect that people who are visual are "North up" types while verbals
are "Heading up."

I think that this correlates to some degree to a male/female preference
such as:
Male/Female
Visual/Verbal
North/Head

Once I had a cable crew with one guy from a plantation in South Carolina
who could not read or write. I also had two fellows a couple of years
out of college: English and History as I recall.

The college grads were fine if you told them "Rig this pull just like
the one we did last Thursday." They were experts at rote memory. If I
said "...just like last Thursday but exit left instead of right" they
were totally flumuxed.

The guy from the plantation, never told him anything except "Attack" and
"Good job." Now he had great spatial orientation skills, if no
edumacation. He was one of the most intelligent fellows I ever met.

Now if you want to meet a dolt, listen to me sign.

jeff wrote:
Geoff Schultz wrote:
...

How do others have their displays configured? How does the CG have
their's configured? What's the purpose of N-up vs heading-up?


My wife and I have this same discussion over the chartplotter, and the
car GPS. She favors "Track Up" while I favor "Course Up" for
situation where we're following a constrained course, and "North Up"
when we're in open situations.

I have always used a chart as my primary tool, and a small screen GPS
chartplotter for location. Last year I upgraded to a nicer Garmin
545, so I'm finding I have to rethink the way I navigate.

This reminds me of a situation many years ago delivering a Folkboat
from New York to Boston. The owner and I had a "navigational
disagreement" and in the aftermath we realize that we visualized the
situation completely differently. He "placed himself" at water
level, and oriented using various range lines, whereas I "raised
myself up" to a birds-eye view where I could create a map in my mind.
Each method has its own limitations and is prone to different types
of errors.

Course-up is OK for navating in the proximity of land, or in narrow
channels, but in the open sea, it's a total bore. You have a line always
heading in the N-S axis, dissecting the display.

North-up is the best for open-sea navigating since it resembles the charts
we were brought up to use before electronic displays became available.



Dennis

"Dennis Pogson" wrote in message
...
jeff wrote:
Geoff Schultz wrote:
...

How do others have their displays configured? How does the CG have
their's configured? What's the purpose of N-up vs heading-up?


My wife and I have this same discussion over the chartplotter, and the
car GPS. She favors "Track Up" while I favor "Course Up" for
situation where we're following a constrained course, and "North Up"
when we're in open situations.



I was N up guy for 20 years on the boat. I liked the familiarity of the
look and feel... They I started flying Cirrus aircraft and my instructor
flamed me for flying N up... told him it was a boating thing... he told me
boats don't go 185 Kts and stuff happens too fast for N up on a plane... I
switched and then found the boat to be strange for me with N up so I
switched. I still will switch back to N up when I am going VERY slow
looking for a dive spot. In a boat, whatever you are used to works.