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An SSB receiver for leasure boating
HF Weather Fax to Black Cat Systems is an application allowing you to decode facsimile weather maps on an iPad, an iPhone or Android device. The analysis and forecast maps are provided by radio stations around the World. Broadcast on shortwave, they can easily be received by BLU receivers as found in boating catalogs.
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Weather analysis and forecasting maps developed by the NOAA (USA) and the Met Office (UK) cover vast areas over the Wold. They can be obtained sending a request by email to the weather server of british company MailaSail. With the latter, many maps are available in a listing (¹) in which it suffices to click on the links to load the request in a message ready to send.
[Update September 13 th 2025]
A growing number of boaters now uses an iPad at sea. But offshore, when no network connection is available, and therefore no more internet access, how to access the various help or technical instructions concerning the tools used ?
The answer lies in building a library of files in PDF format that can be easily stored in the application Apple Books, for free, very fortunately. Read more …
Geogarage, the mapping platform of raster charts derived from official services, today introduced two ENC-S57 rasterized charts layers for Weather4D Routing & Navigation, covering ’Spain and Croatia. The recent update June, 12 th of the application allows the activation of these two new chart sets. Read more …
I relayed in December 2018 an excellent issue published on the blog of our friends at Geogarage, who make a permanent duty of a press review of the best foreign articles concerning cartography, meteorology, and more generally all subjects related to maritime navigation. Here is a translation freely adapted and commented on in French. Read more …
Numerous AIS tracking networks broadcast over the internet are available. Among the best known : Marine Traffic, Vessel Finder, SiiTech, LocateEverything, and many others. One of these networks particularly stands out, AISHub network, an AIS NMEA data sharing center, which offers developers an API allowing the integration of its network into applications, and therefore display of AIS targets received over the Internet directly into the application. Featured from the beginning in Weather4D Routing & Navigation, this system has made it possible to envisage new and particularly innovative services. Read more …
The new AIS AIT5000 transponder (from Digital Yacht) increases transmission rate depending on ship speed.
A new generation of transponder (¹) AIS Class B+ claims to make pleasure boats more visible. Here's how… Read more …
Since 30 th 2018 (*), I already had information regarding discontinuation by NAVX Studio LLC of the development of two historical applications created by Richard Ray : GPSNavX and MacENC. The buyers of these applications and iNavX had clearly announced focuse only to the development of iNavX, on iOS and Android. It is likely that applications on Mac were no longer profitable, especially with the loss of Navionics maps for MacENC. Read more …
Navigation apps are full of acronyms. This coded and abstruse language was originally developed for electronic navigation instruments, GPS mapping and other chartplotters. These acronyms, in the form of three letters most often, are the contraction of terms defining specific navigation data and according functions. This facilitates on-screen display taking few space. If some of these acronyms are relatively well assimilated by the boater, as SOG for Speed Over Ground (speed over the bottom), you can quickly access subtleties that are not always mastered as COG for Course Over Ground, meaning "route runned on the ground", that the word "Course" in English can mean "Route" or "Heading" according to the context. Read more …
With the arrival of iOS 12 and MacOS 10.14 "Mojave" the Apple iBooks app disappears to make way for "Books". The user interface is completely changed, and for authors, a conformity of the works is imposed. The application wins certainly not in ergonomics, we feel a desire to put commercial emphasis on the books in the interface, and Access to updates gets complicated.