Starpath ECDIS BOOK Redirection

Support for Introduction to Electronic Chart Navigation

Note 1. To quote from Section 2.9 on Lights

Of frequent interest for navigation in the fog or twilight is the attribute called exhibition condition of light (EXCLIT). This can have values

(1) on 24h a day, called "light shown without change of character",

(2) daytime only,

(3) during restricted visibility only, and

(4) night light, meaning nighttime only. Most lights are night lights, but it can indeed be useful to know if a light is on 24h, ie EXCLIT = 1.

This property is listed in the Light List for some lights, but not many. Generally we have to assume it is night only, unless this is stated otherwise in the Light List. With ENCs, we have a nice place to check this for individual lights. Again, not many are en- coded at present, but this is easy information to know, so hopefully it will be filled in for all lights in the future.

What we forgot to add to the book is the defintion of nighttime. We find this in S-57, Section 12.8.5.1

Night lights are lights that are normally exhibited from about sunset to about sunrise, they are encoded with EXCLIT = 4 (night light).

Note 2. In passing we recommended downloading NOAA's US Chart No.1 to your phone, but that is not quite so transparent an operation without practice, and it is browser dependent. The problem is the pdf opens up in the browser and not all mobile devices have a way to save it.

One solution is download it on a computer and then mail it to yourself and the mail program will do the interfacing for you—that is, it will ask how you want to open the attachment. Then choose to open in Kindle or Apple Books. (If you do not have one of those readers, they are all free downloads.) These readers then store it in their resprective libraries, and then you can make your own organized bookmarks and annotations, and it is easy to get to. There are no bookmarks in the original. The graphic index is the last page. With Apple products, Air drop is often an effective way to move files to a mobile device.

Note 3. We have an article online with links to Free ENC Viewers that can be used to read these charts and learn about them.

Note 4. Here are a couple packages of echarts for practice. Each set includes both RNC and ENC.