" I am planning on adding AIS "

whats AIS? it that the service you register with and watch
traffic on a web site?









On Jul 13, 11:27*am, " wrote:
On Jul 13, 9:34*am, "~^ beancounter ~^" wrote:

" The RADAR alarm, even on an
inexpensive system, seems to work very well. I never saw a large
squall or a ship that the RADAR didn’t see first."

interesting...what type of set up and systems did you use? i am
concerned for off shore and ocean crossing situations.....200+
n miles off shore and more....the radar will act as a backup system,
of course primary systems are watches 24/7.......

RADAR is great but nowhere near perfect. *For instance, just a couple
hundred miles off the CA coast while in patchy fog we had a box ship
slip through both a 12 mile and a 2 mile radar alarm. *It finally set
the alarm off at about 1.5 miles moments after we had spotted it
visually. *I'm not sure what was up with that one but it may have been
the speed of closure (they were going 22 ish and we 10ish on more or
less reciprocals) and there was a fair bit of sea clutter... *Also,
typical marine radar can't pick up dry or mostly dry squalls and these
are plentiful in some places. *IME, radar is best near shore or in
calmish conditions, off shore even big boats will occasionally hide
behind the waves... *I am planning on adding AIS to help with spotting
the big boats.

-- Tom.