My unit is at least 5 years old, maybe closer to 7 or 8 so in some ways it's obsolete, but is it? It's only loaded with a set of west coast charts for Seattle to Mazatlan and on out to Hawaii. The new cards certainly hold more but this coverage.
It also passes my "show me Alcatraz test." If you're not a SF Bay sailor pick another obstruction to navigation near you (that has no roads on it) and confirm it's there. Many GPS units I've been shown, by proud new owners, found out the base chart package there were sold was actually a load of maps. Any land mass without a road was never depicted. This was very common for Garmin units meant for other markets sold at marine stores. I think basic navigation is slam dunk for most chart plotters. IMHO what separates the land units posing as marine units is what they do with specific marine navigation challenges. Remember unlike a GPS in a car these units get tied to auto helms and actually steer the boat. If you make a mistake and pick a destination waypoint on the other side of an obstruction what features in the unit prevent a disaster. Our GPS has a forward looking alarm. It reads the charted depth way out in front of the boat (adjustable distance) and checks it against my shallow alarm water setting. So instead of waiting for me to get there so a depth finder can alarm it sees charted shallow water in my path and I get an alarm in plenty of time to change course. The other feature is what they do in support of a VHF with DSC Digital Selective Calling. Our GPS feeds our position data to the VHF constantly so in case of an emergency I or my crew don't fumble sending the right location. Pretty simple and all marine GPS units should do that. Ours also reads distress calls received by the VHF and automatically plots them as a waypoint on the chart plotter. Seconds after I hear a distress call I can have a navigation solution and can easily determine if I'm in a position to give aide or just validate that the coast guard has logged the call correctly. Even though Wing Tip's GPS and VHF Radio is getting a few years on it is still ahead of the gear the CG is working with in many parts of the country so you may have to help them get it right. Standard Horizon built both my DSC VHF and my GPS Chart Plotter which is why it was so easy to obtain such a high level of functional integration. There's just a small 3 wire cable signal cable between them. We have the CP150 at the wheel and a Spectrum VHF down at the nav station. Today you'd be looking at a CP180 and an Eclipse+ I think. There is also a 3 wire connection to the auto helm up in the wheel pod that delivers steering commands to the auto helm. This allows the GPS to run a course steering boat directly. On SF Bay I have many safe harbor routes preset so if I need to I can ask the boat to pick up a route in deep water and steer us into the harbor safely. http://www.catalina27.org/wingtip/photos/MVC-021F.JPG The mount on Wing Tip is custom and is best described as a mini dash that clamps onto the wheel guard. I put the same GPS Chart Plotter on my brothers IP38 using an Edson arm mount and a custom plate that adapts to the normal GPS mount. Phil Agur <http://www.catalina27.org/public_pages/profile270.htm> s/v Wing Tip C270 LE #184 MMSI 366901790 -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of PAUL Sent: Friday, December 18, 2009 6:46 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [IC27A] GPS/Chartplotter Mount for wheel steering Hi again everyone. You've been a wealth of info, thanks! One more question: I'm considering purchasing a GPS/Chartplotter to install at the wheel steering helm on the C27. Looking at the Garmin 540S but will consider other manufacturers or models. How do most folks mounth these on their helms? It's not like we have a typical "dash" these can be mounted on but rather the upside down "U" shaped steel tube. Thanks for the insights again. Paul [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
