Technical - AIS
AIS (Automatic Identification Systems) is a system used by ships and vessels for identification at sea. AIS helps to resolve the difficulty of identifying vessels when not in sight and also provides data like ID, position, course, speed and other ship data. AIS transponders automatically transmit the position and velocity of the ship at regular intervals via a VHF radio built into the AIS. The position and velocity originate from the ship's GPS or a separate GPS which is linked to the AIS transponder.
All vessels over 300 tons have to transpond AIS but transponders on yachts relatively new facility so whereas before leisure vessels could only see ships now ships can see leisure vessels. Although ships can turn Class A receivers (ships and larges vessels/stations) can choose not to receive information from Class B transponders ( leisure vessels).
A company called Digital Yacht have kindly supplied me with their AIT250 Class B Transponder. I have linked this with my Raymarine C80 Chartplotter to have live information displayed onto screen. The systems works very well and it helps when navigating in busy waters and is also very good to see what's coming around the 'corner'. Please look on the sponsors page for Digital Yachts link to their website.
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