NASA Marine new AIS with radar like operation
 

I found this, appears to be a new AIS standalone unit, target to
leisure boat market, that operates similar to a traditional radar.
Costs about 260 pounds.


http://www.nasamarine.com/

Anibody know this? Any coments ?

Pascal

"Pascal Goncalves" wrote in message
om...
I found this, appears to be a new AIS standalone unit, target to
leisure boat market, that operates similar to a traditional radar.
Costs about 260 pounds.


http://www.nasamarine.com/

Anibody know this? Any coments ?

Pascal

I have their NAVTEX and am not wild about it, but I have to say that it is
probably the environment more than anything.

Graham

Not much more than is on the website, but I did post a blurb on it
he http://www.navagear.com/2005/04/more_on_ais.html. I had an email
from someone who was experimenting with the "black box" version, which
puts out NMEA sentences that can be used by applications like Maxsea
and Rosepoint Explorer. He said he hooked it up with a rubberduck
antenna on land, and was picking up ships a few miles away.

Aaron Tinling
s/v Sweet Destiny
www.navagear.com - the tools and tech blog for sailors

On 3 May 2005 13:42:51 -0700, "Aaron" wrote:

Not much more than is on the website, but I did post a blurb on it
he http://www.navagear.com/2005/04/more_on_ais.html. I had an email
from someone who was experimenting with the "black box" version, which
puts out NMEA sentences that can be used by applications like Maxsea
and Rosepoint Explorer. He said he hooked it up with a rubberduck
antenna on land, and was picking up ships a few miles away.

This unit he

http://smartradio.ebigchina.com/sdp/...509-74856.html

is a similar device. Quite cheap at US$575 as this is a dual channel receiver
- can pick up channel A & B at the same time unlike the NASA unit which
requires you to pick one channel or the other.

I've been using this Chinese unit for a couple of months now - getting
signals out to 50 miles with no problems even though I'm 25 miles inland.
Sometimes get signals over 80 nautical miles.

Here is a link to some testing I did when I first got the unit:
http://www.jodael.com/sr162_performance_testing.htm

Dave

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All replies to the group please.

Pascal Goncalves wrote:
I found this, appears to be a new AIS standalone unit, target to
leisure boat market, that operates similar to a traditional radar.
Costs about 260 pounds.

Despite NASA calling it a radar, it is nothing of the sort. It just
automatically plots AIS transmissions by other vessels - just as you
might plot a position passed by VHF. If the other ships do not
transmit an AIS message, you see nothing.
NASA have subverted the acronym RADAR - in their book it now stands for
Radio Direction and Ranging. In fact RADAR means Radio Detection and
Ranging.

I use just the NASA engine and a separate VHF aerial linked into Chartwork's
Winchart NautiQ navigation software.
Information given is always MMSI, SOG and COG. Usually the boats name, call
sign and destination is also displayed. If you zoom right in on the chart,
there is an indication as to the boat's length and position of the
transmitter (fore and aft).
Have not used it to cross the shipping channels when going from England to
the Netherlands but will do so within a few weeks.
Advantages:
1) You can identify the ship and call them using MMSI
2) You have their course and speed

Disadvantages: (Probably due to software still under development)
1) The labels giving the vessel's details are unnecessarily large and
there is considerable overlapping. (My home port is near Felixstowe which is
the largest port in the UK)
2) There is no way of "switching off" stationary vessels to reduce the
clutter.
3) There appears no way of setting your projected position in say 5
minutes time or the ships projected position in 5 minutes

Non the less I think it will be very useful
"Pascal Goncalves" wrote in message
om...
I found this, appears to be a new AIS standalone unit, target to
leisure boat market, that operates similar to a traditional radar.
Costs about 260 pounds.


http://www.nasamarine.com/

Anibody know this? Any coments ?

Pascal