Paper Charts or Just Electronic

[Pizzazz]

Some misconceptions here. New GPS/Glonass/etc. receivers are much more sensitive than old. This was all made possible due to the high volume needs of the mobile industry. A phone GPS chip is much better optimized for power than a chart plotter chip. Even without getting into the mobile phone chips, just comparing common chips from uBlox, a v6 chip used in the Raymarine a65 chartplotter for example, takes a couple of minutes to obtain a fix. It is really a problem when you start your engine just before docking (which sometimes restarts the electronics if you forget to switch batteries) to have to wait for a minute or so to get a fix. A generation 8 chip, that you can buy from Amazon for $15, has all the bells and whistles, gets a fix in 10 seconds while in the bulge pointing down. You can’t deny progress.

Regarding the accuracy, most people say the Glonass civilian signal is slightly more accurate and slightly less reliable. For boating needs, it is more accurate than necessary, i.e. down to less than 10 ft.

Bottom line is, if you have an older chartplotter, the best you can do is to get a modern chip and interface it to the chartplotter. Based on your system connections, you can program the uBlox 8 to update 10x, 20x or 50x a second (an overkill).

Lastly, NMEA 0183 is a serial connection, good up to 1,000 ft or more and very tolerant to all sorts of noise.

There are worse things to worry about than GPS accuracy.

[donradcliffe]

There's an interesting discussion on this topic at the Gcaptain forum.

I agree with what the IMO says:

1.6 ECDIS should reduce the navigational workload compared to using the paper chart. It
should enable the mariner to execute in a convenient and timely manner all route planning,
route monitoring and positioning currently performed on paper charts. It should be capable
of continuously plotting the ship’s position.