Downloadable Light Lists

[GordMay]

“A novel approach to tedious chart updates” ~ by Tom Tursi
”Ocean Navigator” magazine - July/Aug 2001
http://www.oceannavigator.com/article.php?a=45

”... Now, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), the new DMA, has made this process vastly easier by putting all of the Light List information on the Internet. The U.S. publishes two types of light lists: One is the USCG Light List covering U.S. waters. The other is the NIMA List of Lights covering non-U.S. waters. When preparing for a cruise, you can download light lists from the Internet as follows:

1. Go to the NIMA web site at http://164.214.12.145/index/ and choose NIMA On-Line Navigation Publications.

2. This will bring up a link, NIMA On-Line Navigation Publications.

3. Notice the two options, either NIMA List of Lights or USCG Light List. First choose either the NIMA world icon or the USCG icon to determine which volume you need.

4. Next - for example if you are doing a cruise in U.S. waters - choose USCG Light List; this brings up http://164.214.12.145/pubs/USCGLL/pu...cgll_list.html , which gives the titles of USCG Light Lists by Volume Number and a description of areas covered.

5. For a Chesapeake Bay cruise you would choose Volume II; this brings up http://164.214.12.145/pubs/USCGLL/pu....html?rid=3306 . This is the cover page for Volume II, which offers a list of options. You can enter a navigational aid number or range of numbers, but for cruise planning it's easiest to choose Minimum Bounding Rectangle, which will give you aids within a geographic area defined by your choice of latitude and longitude.

6. This brings up http://164.214.12.145/pubs/USCGLL/pu...scgll_mbr.html * the Minimum Bounding Rectangle page, where you can specify the latitudes and longitudes and choose whether you want all or some aids within that rectangle.

7. For example, if you enter 3900N/7620W and 3858N/7626W and ask for All Aids from Volume II, you'll get a summary of search results indicating that four aids, No. 7840 through 7980, were located.

8. Click on the search link and you'll get the details of these four aids. Of course, if you specify a much larger area you'll get many pages of aids.

9. Similar procedures can be followed for the NIMA List of Lights for non-U.S. waters. And, you can specify larger geographic areas covering your entire cruise itinerary and alternate routes and ports. You can also specify the light ranges you are interested in; for example, you can ask for lights with ranges more than five miles, and it will filter out the lesser distances. ...”