Free Worldwide Real Time Weather Reports

[Ozbullwinkle]

Hi guys,

I would be interested in hearing feedback & experiences from anyone who has used this free service as described below.

As well as general feedback I am particularly interested in hearing from anyone who has used it on the Australian East Coast & in the Pacific Island region.:-


"Now a simple email request will get you all the ship reports within 300 nmi of your location at sea that were transmitted over the past six hours to the Voluntary Observing Ship program, worldwide.

Just send an email to shipreports@starpath.com with your lat and lon in the first line of the body of the message (in decimal degrees as shown below) and you will get the reports back by return mail. The first line should be blank other than that location.

This is a free service compliments of Starpath School of Navigation, who also offers a free barometer calibration service at www.starpath.com/barometers.

Here are two samples you can try: approach to New York City (40.123N, 72.456W) and the approach to Bremerhaven in the North Sea (55.60N, 3.50E)... or try anywhere you choose.

For more information, instructions, and abbreviations used, send an email to
shipreports@starpath.com with the word “ help “ in the subject line."

[LeaseOnLife]

don't know about this service, just tried it, one "help" and one request for current position. No return after 2 minutes...=crap

When we crossed the Pacific and the IndianO, we used YOTREPS Offshore reports via WINLINK:

YOTREPS Offshore Reports

Dirk

[Nicholson58]

the base problem is E-mail. Unless you have a SAT Phone or some other internet connection you have nothing, free or otherwise.

[LeaseOnLife]

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

the base problem is E-mail. Unless you have a SAT Phone or some other internet connection you have nothing, free or otherwise.

Email via SSB, winlink or sailmail, or others, is the easy part. But the Starpath service doesn't seem to respond to requests.

And looking at bunch of text is nowhere close to the representation Yotreps does with ship reports.