AIS : it is worth it?

[sailingdog]

You really want a good radar reflector, regardless of what else you put on the boat.

[MJBrown]

We just made two runs on the Delaware River and have to make one more before we're done for the season. The Delaware is loaded with commerical shipping and you have to pay attention. While you can manage well enough as is, having AIS to tell you the status that freighter or barge would be nice. I plan on adding it at some point in time, maybe spring when I add radar. Anyone have it already?

[negrini]

I have the Icom receiver and love it. Incredibly simple installation and plug-and-play. The anoying is it will transmit to plotter only when there is a transmitter nearby, if not, as my E120 doesn't know the reason of not receiving information it shows a "not operational" icon on display, leaving me guessing it's faulty or no ships nearby. Another NMEA failure for not defining a "ping" status of receiver as a default sentence, or an empty VDM transmition in case no transmiters at range ....

[MJBrown]

Negrini, where did you mount it on your B43? I have the same boat and thought I'd place it near the VHF and run the NMEA 0183 harness back to the E120.
Mike

[negrini]

Mike, my AIS is mounted behind VHF, inside the locker, laying flat on the left wall. Just removed antena from VHF and ran a 3 feet extention back to it. It's a good location as power and antena are available within inches. I was somehow lucky as St Barts had run the NMEA from E120 to VHF for lat/long DSC. I removed this data cable from VHF and moved to AIS. Since I lost the NMEA port on E120 (AIS NMEA is built at 38400 bps only) I'll run another cable from S3G back to VHF in the future. Indeed, I still don't have a MMSI number, so DSC can wait. I had also requested St BArts to provision a SeaTalk cable run to this location also, as I planned to install an internal ST60 repeater, so if I eliminate its external alarm I could use its NMEA out to feed back the VHF, eliminating the need to run such cable from AP. I didn't decide yet, let's see if I can overcome the hudge burocracy to obtain a MMSI down here ....

[MJBrown]

Negrini, I appreciate the info and will look to do the same thing. Sounds like you got lucky with the NMEA cable already in place. I'm pretty sure I'll have to run one through the conduit. I'd like to connect my VHF DSC to the GPS as well so perhaps I'll run a second cable. I forgot all about the MMSI #. I had one for the previous boat and submitted a request for the new one but can't recall if I ever received a response. Guess I better go through my paperwork on the boat.
Mike

[MJBrown]

Negrini, I checked the website and retrieved my MMSI #. Not sure why you commented about the burocracy, the web site makes it easy. Here's the site I used.
Mike
MMSI Registration for VHF/DSC

[jrd22]

Stuart- you won't regret getting both the radar and the AIS here in the PNW. If by radar "target" you mean a reflector, you definitely need one. The vast majority of the traffic out there will not be broadcasting on the AIS nor receiving yours.