Seattle, WA   December , Number 22



NGA logo, formerly NIMA
Short link to NGA NIMA Pubs

There are many wonderful resources on the NGA website, formerly NIMA, formerly DMAHTC, formerly DMA, formerly HO, formerly NO etc... ie the home of Bowditch and many other important navigation references. And with each new change in the agency it gets harder to find these valuable references, so we have made a short link to get there: starpath.com/navpubs. Save this link, it is a valuable one


  

NOAA Weather Radio online

You can now listen to the VHF weather reports as streaming audio. These are not from NOAA but they do announce the services here: Listen to Weather Radio online. Should be a nice bookmark for those who do not have a portable VHF or weather radio at home.

  

The unfortunate cover of this othewise excellent book
New book on Oceanography and Seamanship

...well, it is not really new, but we just recently discovered it was still in print. We thought it was out of print for many years or we would have been carrying it and recommending it all along. Very few outlets carry it and we thought it was gone, though we rely on our own old copies often and for diverse queries. If you care about how the wind and ocean affects your boat, this is a unique and wonderful resource. Gives real numbers without being too technical. See Oceanography and Seamanship by Van Dorn

  

Online chart viewer from NOAA
NOAA Chart Viewer settling in

NOAA has had a nice new electronic chart viewer on line for some time, but the link to it has come and gone and moved around. Now we seem to be consistently find it here NOAA online chart viewer. This is a good place to see what any US chart looks like and in fact there are links to download a full working copy for the electronic charting system (ECS)of your choice. They will work in any of them and they are FREE. The download link is on the main index page linked above under the name RNC = raster navigation charts.

Also note that NOAA has settled in on the names as well. A RNC is a bitmap or raster chart in the BBS format, whereas the ENC (electronic navigatin chart) is a vector product in for example the S-57 format. So RNC = bitmaps (pictures of real charts) and ENC = vector (formulas that recreate a chart from outlines, fills and text overlays). If we apply this nomenclature to other prodcuts we would say that C-map brand charts are ENC and softchart brand charts are RNC.


  

Now with Highlights, Bookmarks, and Comments
Elibra Reader 2.0

We are pleased to announce version 2.0 of our elibra reader is now online for your free upgrade. Version 2 lets you enter your own personal book marks as well as add high-lights and even comments. These will be saved with your document automatically, you need not remember to save. To remove them, just right click and select delete. All high lights can also be extended to include bookmarks. We have also added a two-page spread view if that might be convenient—it works well with our electronic magazines, such as Blue Water Sailing.

You will find these new features really enhance your use of the reader for our electronic courses and other study materials. You can now highlight the text as you read it just as you would a paper book. To download the new version just click here, save to your desktop and then select Run. It takes just seconds to upgrade. These enhanced user-controlled features makes the Starpath Elibra Reader unique among secure-ebook readers.

Update from August 10... we have now added a slick region zoom option as well. Latest version now is 2.0.3


  

Compilation of celestial navigation articles

Starpath School of Navigation in its role as editor of the Newsletter of the The Foundation for the Promotion of the Art of Navigation is pleased to announce that the complete set of 286 articles on the subject of celestial navigation that were published in the Journal of the Institude of Navigation between 1946 and 2002 is now available on a single CD at the modest cost of $25 from the Institute of Navigation at www.ion.org. Work on the selection and preparation of the articles, along with the CD production, has been donated by the Navigation Foundation in keeping with its goal of promoting the history, science, and practice of celestial navigation and related topics. You can view the complete list of articles at the Navigation Foundation website.

  

Starpath presents talk on barometers at NWS conference

David Burch, director of Starpath, presented a talk titled "Developments and Applications of Digital Barometers for Mariners" (See Abstract) at the 2007 Pacific Northwest Weather Workshop, sponsored by the National Weather Service, the Atmospheric Sciences Dept. of University of Washington, and the American Meteorological Society. The poster composite of slides used in the talk can be downloaded (Baro talk poster)—it is 3.5 MB pdf. Right click and choose save. We stressed the value of accurate barometers and their use in evaluating model output data (Grib maps) underway. The conference was held at NOAA headquarters at SandPoint in Seattle, March 2nd and 3rd.

  

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