The advantage of FREE opencpn and cheap $10 GPS pucks bought on eBay is they use Russian/US and possibly other satellites.
Never lost signal, ever.
Our dedicated marine plotter with expensive antenna regularly drops signal because it only uses US GPS.
Endeavor,
I haven't found the solution yet, but it is frustrating to see that all the inshore charts reside in my Garmin MFD, yet I seem to be locked into GPS in order to use them. It would be incredibly simple to make the system work without GPS and much faster than using paper charts. It would require pushing a button to change to "no GPS" mode.
Say I'm heading towards the West Point day marker, I would overlay my radar on the chart. I then touch that radar dot on the screen with a stylus to get a very accurate read out. Let's say it reads 2.43 miles bearing 17 degrees. That now appears instantly on my MFD, but it is using GPS to provide me with the bearing.
If I was in "no GPS mode, I touch the radar dot to get distance and the MFD asks me for the magnetic bearing. I then use my hand bearing compass to get 17 degrees. I touch the West Point day marker on the split screen and input the bearing. The MFD would instantly show my position without GPS. I could do the old school triangulation using other targets, but a single bearing and the radar distance within 1/10th mile would give me a fairly accurate position.
A running fix would also be easy with the MFD doing the calculations. Five minutes later I take another bearing of the same or a different target. The MFD updates showing my new position, plus COG, SOG, and a track. No pencil to paper, parallel ruler from compass rose, or chart table. Maybe it's a feature of some of the software noted above, but why not a safety feature on every MFD? Maybe people don't carry hand bearing compasses anymore?
You can do this very easily with Timezero.
Andosan,
That will do it. $500 for a program that has the charts that are already on my Garmin. I would also need a touch screen laptop even though my Garmin is touch screen. I would spend $1,000 for something that's already sitting in front of my helm (a touch screen with charts loaded). I could put a laptop on the dinette where I used to lay out paper charts. I could get the distance from the Garmin radar and walk back over to the laptop and enter the info. Seems like a lot of money for a clunky solution.
I've always been curious about the "planning" ability of navigation software. Sit at home on the couch and enter waypoints. Copy them to a thumb drive that I take to the boat and enter in the nav system. Label that track LaConner to Olympia. Go boating by transiting from waypoint 11 to 12 to 13 all the way to my destination, waypoint 234. Reverse the numbers to go home. Does anybody do that?
Absolutely! And sight reduction tables to for celestial navigation for the one person who still use a sextant.Somebody ought to consider writing a plug in for OCPN to provide manual navigation tools, like dead reckoning and the ability to quickly position the boat by triangulation. To perform dead reckoning the software needs the same inputs as you would, heading and speed and optional drift.
But yes... really, install two multi-mode position sensors. If there ever comes a time when you can't get a fix it's time to KYAG. Literally, the entire world's commerce depends on GPS and its sister systems. It isn't going to go down. There is no power in the world that could take it all down.
With that I still carry minimal paper charts. I'm faster with dividers, compass (the kind with a point and pencil lead) and rule on paper charts than I am with a plotter when working bearing and range.
.
Andosan,
That will do it. $500 for a program that has the charts that are already on my Garmin. I would also need a touch screen laptop even though my Garmin is touch screen. I would spend $1,000 for something that's already sitting in front of my helm (a touch screen with charts loaded). I could put a laptop on the dinette where I used to lay out paper charts. I could get the distance from the Garmin radar and walk back over to the laptop and enter the info. Seems like a lot of money for a clunky solution.
I've always been curious about the "planning" ability of navigation software. Sit at home on the couch and enter waypoints. Copy them to a thumb drive that I take to the boat and enter in the nav system. Label that track LaConner to Olympia. Go boating by transiting from waypoint 11 to 12 to 13 all the way to my destination, waypoint 234. Reverse the numbers to go home. Does anybody do that?
What’s wrong with having a plan B just in case. It doesn’t take much effort or money to brush up on DR skills and utilize e-charts without GPS. Isn’t that what good seamanship is about.
Does anyone know of a "manual" chart plotter that doesn't rely on GPS?
Right? As they say, the most difficult and arduous leg of cruising is cutting the docklines and clearing your slip.Nothing wrong with it but worrying about a meteor strike isn't either. Why not get and learn to use a sextant, just in case? It is my judgment that some boaters will worry about all kinds of the extremely unlikely and spend bookoo bucks, just in case. For example, on another forum there is a current discussion about having an AED aboard in case someone has a heart attack. So, if at sea, even if one is brought back to life with an AED pretty much you are still screwed. But, there is that one chance in 300 million that one could get lucky. Getting my point?
Really?
All it takes with opencpn is to hover over point,
right click with mouse - click navigate to here
Red line and flashing icon appears giving bearing, distance, time to go and vmg
Literally seconds to do.
With that I still carry minimal paper charts. I'm faster with dividers, compass (the kind with a point and pencil lead) and rule on paper charts than I am with a plotter when working bearing and range.
If you are going to use a magnetic compass and charts and radar, when is the last time your compass was swung? Have you changed a lot of equipment in its vicinity since then? There are very few people who perform this service anymore...
Thanks, All. Let me re-phrase:
The chart-plotters I use regularly (TimeZero and openCPN) don't lend themselves to navigating by compass or sextant if the GPS network (or my GPS equipment) goes down. I would still have access to my electronic charts, and would like an app that makes it easy to do bearings and plottings on screen. Paper charts are impractable (and expensive) for me, since I range from Mexico to the Aleutians. I have the skills on paper, just want software that lets me apply them.
OpenCPN has plotting and all charting functions without a GPS. You just need to learn how to use it.
So does Timezero...
Are they both free? My guess is that was the point....
For what most US boaters need out of nav software...anything beyond OpenCPN is probably wasted money.
Well you are starting to get the idea of the difference between a chart plotter/MFD and dedicated navigation software on a PC. With something like Timezero, you don’t need the MFD. Everything is already there on the software; nav data is provided to the software from you existing sensors.
And yes, the planning scenario that you describe is exactly what mature software like Timezero is built for. Only you don’t have to worry about transferring via thumb drive - you’ve planned your route on the same platform that you will use to navigate.
BTW you don’t need a touchscreen PC, a mouse will do just fine.
Plus, and maybe someone mentioned this already. With a USB to NMEA2K gateway TimeZero can operate your auto pilot too.
This thread has made me curious. OpenCPN has a plugin with some DR functions. Ocpn_Draw I can't offer an evaluation having only just found it.Thanks, All. Let me re-phrase:
The chart-plotters I use regularly (TimeZero and openCPN) don't lend themselves to navigating by compass or sextant if the GPS network (or my GPS equipment) goes down. I would still have access to my electronic charts, and would like an app that makes it easy to do bearings and plottings on screen. Paper charts are impractable (and expensive) for me, since I range from Mexico to the Aleutians. I have the skills on paper, just want software that lets me apply them.
Are they both free? My guess is that was the point....
For what most US boaters need out of nav software...anything beyond OpenCPN is probably wasted money.
If the GPS network goes down, you might be better off just hanging out where you are as really bad things are probably afoot.