Charts on cd rom ?

Does anybody use charts on cd rom instead of paper charts?

I have just been looking at them and considering the area they cover for each cd the extra cost would appear to be justified by the fact they cover far more than any one paper map does....and allow you to zoom in to greater detail on a smaller area...something you would have to go buy a seperate paper map for!

Any comments would be appreciated before I hit the "add to basket" button!

The cd I am thinking of is Memory Map Admiralty cd rom @ 99.95....anyone know or can recomend an alternative.

Dave

[nimue4]

Hummmm.
I'd be interested in replies to this one. Use big paper charts at the moment but having chartplotter and no electronic chart for it I do wonder what I'm missing.
Been out on other boats with plotters and they haven't bothered to get electronic charts either. Any of you got one and is it any good? We all just use numbers we know to find wrecks and stuff.
Interested, Jules.

Jules,
The software I was looking at included some for plotters and they seem to be around the 150 quid mark!

I can see the advantages of having such software in that your position is plotted directly onto an actual map instead of the blank grey screen I get at the moment. Do you use the plotter as a normal gps without the overlayed map?

I dont own a plotter but wanted to use the charts to pull off some wreck marks without having to try and work out exactly where they are, just click a point and read the position...then add it manually to the gps.

Also the cd's cover a far greater area and are zoomable so you dont have buy detailed charts of different areas ...to buy an overall paper chart and the detail charts for the three ports I fish would cost nearly £100. The cd would give me charts reaching almost to edinburgh and down to kyngs lynn.

The main reason I posted was I noticed that the RYA charts cd's have an exiry date!! They cost £40 per region but expire on dec 31st! Does anyone know if this is the same for all the cds? Ok..so charts do get updated...and if you pilot a supertanker its probably important you know this stuff...but a 16' fishing boat!

One answer would be to uninstall the program at the end of the year and change the date on the pc when you wish to use it as its not something I would be looking to use ever day after an initial period.

Cheers
Dave

[nimue4]

Dave,
No I don't have a map cd, have been given numbers and got some from dive books. Not a fantastic way of doing things as when you motor out to the position (easy with a plotter) you never find the damn wreck right there! So you have to locate new wrecks when you have a spare 1/2 hour or so then when you find it just hit the man overboard button. Then you get it spot on everytime afterwards. I guess you would read the cd on a computer?
Have often thought of getting a map as you can play with all your saved data at home and re live a good trip!
Talk to you tomorrow at Brixham, is there a live sandeel seller down there? If not think I may call in at Teignmouth on the way.
Cheers Jules

Jules ...I got lucky and the local chandler had one of the cd's which was sent to him as a sample. he had never installed it so did so while I was in the shop.He also lent me the cd ....and I have to return it on weds

The charts are identical to the paper charts ...but you can zoom right in and place your cursor over a mark or wreck and simply read the co ordinates off the screen! It took us about 2 hrs to get the co ordinates of every marked wreck within 15 miles of the three ports we fish...a total of over 150 potential fishing spots :) . Subsequent cross checking with dive sites showed a large majority of them to be listed as dives and the positions are acurate using wgs84 co ordinates

We have also plotted a safe route into the three ports which we fish which we can use in the event of fog and is guaranteed not to take us over any rocks (or in the case of one harbour ..through the harbour pub lounge!)

So now we need to spend a few hours putting them all in the gps and a few months fishing them all!

The chart we used was the Admiralty chart cd £39.99....BUT....it expires on dec 31st . This was the reason the chandler lent me the cd as he agreed that buying it with only 3 months left to go was silly....and I promised to purchase the new edition in january.


Good Points.
The CD contains over twenty charts, including the detail charts for each port on the east coast.
It is simple to use and very simple to get positions from.
It supports connection to a gps arial via a com port (but not usb) if your boat is suitable to take a laptop on board. This allows direct plotting of your current position onto your pc screen.
It only costs the same as a ps2 game.

Bad Points
It costs the same as a ps2 game ...but expires on Dec 31st!
There is no option to print the charts to take out with you...but print screen and paste into photo shop works a treat :)
There does not appear to be an option to load part charts onto a pda/gps (which would have been great!)
Looking at the coverage a trailable boat angler in your area would have to buy two cd's to cover both north devon and south devon coastlines.

Conclusion (would I buy it)
Yes...but not untill the new january edition comes out. At the moment I have got enough information off the cd in two hours to keep me busy for months. The fact it expires should not be a problem in that I will only be using it for occasional reference and hopefully by dec 2005 I will hardly need it except when planning trips further afield ( and its easy to change the date on a pc...it would only be a problem if you tried to connect a gps and it got the date from the satelittes)

There are more expensive chart cd's that dont expire (£99) but the extra cost in my opinion would only be justified if you were planning to use the cd as a plotter on the boat.

Hope this helps

Dave