NOAA to End Printing Paper Nautical Charts

[Phil M]

Thanks for more clarification mastreb,
Sounds like we're ringing the same bell, technoligy is great - but it's not perfect (yet), so be aware.

Whether it's a chart plotter or an IPad, you cannot help but smile at the technology that places you onshore while you are anchored out in a bay. It makes you wonder about a Canadian government employee using a sounding line and then entering the data.

[DaveB]

Mastreb,
It's important to carry Navigational Charts were you are cruiseing. Any electronic divices could fail at any givin time.
Also important to freshen up your basic navigation skills. That means Dead Reconing knowing your Lat. and Long. at any time.
Good Idea for those who travel in local waters to remember their Latitude. and Longitude.
Easy way to remember is Latitude is looking with my head up to ceiling and down to floor. Longitude is like reaching to my left or right on a table.
So when you see Lat. N 27.12.05 That means 27degrees North of the Equitor, each degree = 60 miles, the 12 = minutes of that mile each min. = 1 mile, the .05 = a fraction of a mile.
So in reality 27.12.05296 will pin point you to exact location and am sure most of you know.(gps as pentioned is only a illustration, is not for any location known)
This data is located on your GPS and easy for anyone to locate you.
Just one more thing, that .05296 can pin point your eyeball.
Dave

There are a lot of things that will go away within our lifetimes. A lot of household knickknacks are already "printable" on 3D printers, and as those printers gain the capability to blend materials precisely and go down in cost, the market for "crap imported from china" is going to go away. It'll be a long time before you could print a smartphone, but coffee cups and binacle mounts are doable today.

Soon instead of buying these objects at a store, you'll pay to download a template and print it at your desk.

It's pretty easy to go to Kinkos and get charts printed on large-format printers, which is the way to go if you want to use paper. I keep paper charts aboard and have taught my children to navigate using them, but other than for learning purposes they are unused. With four idevices, a chartplotter, and the rarity with which I leave the sight of land, it's simply not necessary.

[seahouse]

So when you see Lat. N 27.12.05 That means 27degrees North of the Equitor, each degree = 60 miles, the 12 = minutes of that mile each min. = 1 mile, the .05 = a fraction of a mile.
So in reality 27.12.05296 will pin point you to exact location and am sure most of you know.(gps as pentioned is only a illustration, is not for any location known)
This data is located on your GPS and easy for anyone to locate you.
Just one more thing, that .05296 can pin point your eyeball.

Of course (allowing me to complete your post, Dave) with only the latitude given, your location is closely defined to be anywhere on a ring that circles the globe at the surface at that latitude, and for a pinpoint location of your eyeball on that ring you also need the longitude.

[mastreb]

I've gotten a tad rusty. I taught myself celestial navigation 25 years ago in the Navy, and I carry a copies of the Bowditch and Chapman's aboard in waterproof plastic bins, so I could bone up in a hurry if I actually got lost offshore.

That said, where I live there's only one answer to being lost: "Head due east until you reach land". Easily doable even if my magnetic compass were to also break

[Kittiwake]

NOAA to End Printing Paper Nautical Charts .....

Very cool. I just searched 'NOAA pdf charts' and downloaded the ones for Seattle coastal area. Apparently the free downloads are available until Jan 22, 2014.
Kittiwake

[mastreb]

Here's another significant source of error in raster-based charts that I'd not considered (from the NOAA website):

"NOAA RNCs™ were made by scanning the NOAA paper chart printing materials. Any inaccuracies due to old methods of collecting, processing and displaying data on the paper chart were transferred to the RNCs. As a result, the accuracy of modern positioning systems such as GPS may exceed the positional accuracy of the RNC. The impact of positioning accuracies can be minimized by not zooming an RNC beyond the scale of the original NOAA chart. "

I would hope that the charts used in commercial GPS systems are vector-based (ENC), which should be much better than raster-based (RNC) charts for this type of error.

[Wind Chime]

Pacific Northwest Overlap

Interestingly, I just found out that as of December 2011, NOAA and CHS agreed to discontinue overlap of charts in the Pacific Northwest.

All charts and chart numbers for the region around; Juan de-fu@ Strait / Victoria / San Juan Islands, has been resized and reallocated so that charts for this area are either managed and published by Canada or the USA, not both as it has been in the past.

http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/ ... cific.htm#