Can You Get Radar & AIS Overlay on Laptop ? AIS Transceiver Recommendations ?

[SV Liberty]

"receivers are a passing fad"

I wish this were not the case. I consider our AIS receiver, which displays on our Northstar chartplotter, to be one of our most important pieces of electronic gear when sailing offshore. I consider ikons of vessels transponding Class B AIS signals to be some of the most bothersome pieces of information displayed on our chartplotter screen. I could care less that the plastic sailboat sailing 1/4 mile away and making 5.2 knots has a CPA of .02 NM with a TCPA of 49 minutes relative to my plastic boat sailing 4.9 knots. When there are 14 of these icons on my screen, I may not see the icon that is the huge steel boat that is 8 miles away making 17.3 knots with a CPA of .02 NM and a TCPA of 21 minutes (or whatever). HE's the guy I care about seeing, and knowing the name of, not the myriad of slow plastic boats who can afford the latest electronic doodad. I have figured out how to filter the pleasure craft, generally (for example, when multiple slow plastic boats are heading the same direction at the same time, and are close by big boat standards but far by sailboat standards), except when they are in my danger zone, then I listen to annoying alerts for hours unless I change course to get away from the slow plastic boats or reduce/turn off my danger zone, which then puts me in danger of big steel boats.

Because of our AIS I have been able to communicate by name with big boats off the East Coast, in the Bahamas, crossing the Gulf Stream, crossing the Gulf of Mexico, in the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay, in the Gulf ICW and even the east coast ICW, and anywhere else there has been big steel boat traffic. I love my AIS, but I really, really don't like Class B transponders.

Vent over.

[fairbank56]

I tend to agree. Here's a partial screen shot of Annapolis harbor on my Shipplotter monitoring station. 10 boats at the pier and 4 at anchor all xmitting 24hrs a day.

Eric

[Charlie]

While in the harbor at Cabo we had a Class B transciever that was shooting out emergency alerts every couple of hours. That was annoying. It would be nice to be able to filter out boats that are going a slow speed or some other way to loose the "plastic " boats.

[SCCatSailor]

Lunasea - I'm in the same position (with a Garmin chartplotter) and not thrilled about Garmin's AIS600 price tag. Have been advised by a local installer that West Marine's house brand transponder (at about $500) will work fine with the Garmin plotter - says he's done it many times. I think I may need to buy an active antenna splitter (the Garmin comes with one), but the total cost will still be considerably less. Anyone using the West Marine AIS?

[lunasea.ds]

I understand Garmin's video cable provides pc monitor output through the VGA/XGA output. We had to get a SVGA HD male/male cable to extend the Garmin's cable to the LCD but it's not easy plug and play from 4212 chartplotter to LCD. The VGA on my laptop is output only so that's not bound to work. Garmin cable and LCD both analog. Maybe we're missing something? Anybody got any suggestions? Thank you. Merry Christmas CF peeps! Susan

[David M]

Originally Posted by Charlie

While in the harbor at Cabo we had a Class B transciever that was shooting out emergency alerts every couple of hours. That was annoying. It would be nice to be able to filter out boats that are going a slow speed or some other way to loose the "plastic " boats.

The Furuno FA-150 has this filtering ability. I would suppose there are some others as well. I have mine set to ignore vessels under 2 knots which eliminates most vessels that are not underway.

[SV Demeter]

Originally Posted by David M

The Furuno FA-150 has this filtering ability. I would suppose there are some others as well. I have mine set to ignore vessels under 2 knots which eliminates most vessels that are not underway.

So that commercial fishing boat that is just drifting while lettign their gear soak at night with all the lights off and crew asleep does not show up for you?

I do like the idea of filtering for sure though. Maybe filtering on some other field than speed though?

[bazzer]

Know I will get flamed,but just go Raymarine with a laptop. This will do all you want.
Merry Xmas
Baz