I thought I might chip in with my twopence worth of AIS experience.

We used AIS all the way from Liverpool, via Ireland, Spain and Portugal and
then onto the Caribbean. In all that time we only found one large ship that
didn't transmit AIS info, he then turned his AIS on after I hailed him on
16. Our AIS is a cheap stand alone affair that has its own VHF aerial
mounted on the rear gantry, this will double up as an emergency VHF aerial
should we ever lose the mast.
http://www.compass24.com/cgi-bin/abnetshop.pl?ARTNR=113430

We would set the AIS to alarm whenever a ship came within 32NM; this would
be long before we would see anything on radar, also the AIS uses milliamps
not Amps like the Radar. On the Atlantic crossing we only had visual contact
with about 3 ships over 2900 miles, but saw many more over the horizon due
to the AIS.

I believe Fishing ships and Military vessels are exempt from transmitting,
certainly most fishing vessels in Europe didn't transmit.

We both loved the AIS as it was just one more bit of comfort on the passage,
it doesn't mean we reduced visual or radar watches, and we would always
maintain a radio watch.

I asked the Navman rep at a trade show last year when they would integrate
the AIS signals into their chart plotters, he told me that they were waiting
to see if AIS survived as the current format will not work in very high
volume areas and there is a new standard in the pipeline which may supersede
it. I believe there is also a new reduced standard that will allow cheaper
AIS transmitters to be produced for the small boat community.

Paul C
S/V Lady Stardust, Liverpool UK (Now St Lucia :-) )
www.lady-stardust.co.uk <http://www.lady-stardust.co.uk/>

-----------------------------------------------------------
Baba Panda and Tashiba Owners Mailing List --
For more info, please check out the FAQ...
http://www.ballreich.net/hypermail/baba-l/faq.html
Received on Mon Feb 26 09:53:52 2007