Ais. Radar. Thoughts.

p.gazibara

p.gazibara

Member III
If budget is in mind, an AIS receiver can be had for under $100. I think ours was about $50. I spent another 75 on a powered VHF splitter that allows our VHF and AIS to share the same antenna atop the mast.

We run OpenCPN as our main chartplotter at our nav desk and AIS is overlayed on that. It works great! We have seen boats up to 60nm out. While that is rare, we can almost always see boats within 20nm that are transmitting.

Being that we are a small nimble sailboat, we aren't too worried about the pangas at night, more worried about the big stuff that doesn't turn or stop well. Those ships almost always have AIS running, but honestly you can hear most of boats from pretty far off if they are steaming.(and you are sailing)

We don't transmit, so if things look close we will use the AIS into to hail larger vessels to make sure they see us on their radar. We did this quite a bit coming down the west coast.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think colregs requires all vessels to ring a bell/horn when visibility is impared every minute when underway. Not that anyone follows that.

It really is bone chilling to hear the fog horn on cargo ships in the fog, but it really is a good way to track their location.

This doesn't really help the original post about radar though. If we had the extra $$$, it sure would be nice to have radar.
 
S

supersailor

Contributing Partner
We have to cross an extremely busy Straights that feeds Olympia, Tacoma, Seattle, and Vancouver, BC. Radar is the greatest in the frequent fogs but it takes a lot of interpretation ( operator skill) to use effectively. It takes months to get proficient in reading the little dots and lines on the screen. If the owner doesn't want to expend the effort to become radar proficient, AIS looks mighty good. All boats equipped with AIS Transceivers can "see" each other and can communicate with each other on DSC.

You would miss the lunatic in the plastic runabout but you might miss him on the radar because of his poor return.

I opted for both because we cross the shipping lanes at right angles all the time. The new 5 watt AIS I'm installing has a calculated range of 14.2 miles based on the ship having it's antenna above the bridge. It is comforting to know they see me.
 
toddster

toddster

Curator of Broken Parts
Blogs Author
p.gazibara said:
If budget is in mind, an AIS receiver can be had for under $100. I think ours was about $50. I spent another 75 on a powered VHF splitter that allows our VHF and AIS to share the same antenna atop the mast.

We run OpenCPN as our main chartplotter at our nav desk and AIS is overlayed on that. It works great! We have seen boats up to 60nm out. While that is rare, we can almost always see boats within 20nm that are transmitting.

Being that we are a small nimble sailboat, we aren't too worried about the pangas at night, more worried about the big stuff that doesn't turn or stop well. Those ships almost always have AIS running, but honestly you can hear most of boats from pretty far off if they are steaming.(and you are sailing)

We don't transmit, so if things look close we will use the AIS into to hail larger vessels to make sure they see us on their radar. We did this quite a bit coming down the west coast.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think colregs requires all vessels to ring a bell/horn when visibility is impared every minute when underway. Not that anyone follows that.

It really is bone chilling to hear the fog horn on cargo ships in the fog, but it really is a good way to track their location.

This doesn't really help the original post about radar though. If we had the extra $$$, it sure would be nice to have radar.
Click to expand...

The Standard Horizon GX-series radios receive yer AIS & GPS AND generate yer fog signals. Plus, like, they’re radios. Seems like a pretty good value. As we all know, the pattern of the horn tells whether you are sailing, motoring, or anchored, but maybe not as many people know the that the frequency of the horn tells you the size of the vessel. (You set this in the GX radio - it’s part of your AIS data). So, our boats end up making this sort of pre-pubescent alto-sax sound. Not sure how much terror it inspires in other vessels...

I’ve heard that Asian fishermen are messing up the whole system by using emergency DSC beacons to mark their drift nets.

Oh yeah... lots of last-generation radars and chart plotters available for small bucks on EBay and the consignment stores. Typically doesn’t network like the new stuff but maybe a reasonably priced entry for thrifty sailors.
 
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