Boat Forum / Electronics / January 2009

I am trying to devise a simple circuit to monitor when a 24v nav lamp
has blown.  Found this http://www.gammatron.com.au/datasheets/GM050%20Datasheet.pdf
but at AU$54 it is pretty pricey.  Should not be to difficult to make
up, but I need to know he values of the components.   I ...

I have a 2004 Yamaha 40 4-stroke (Model F40TLRD). I'm trying to figure
out the output that it puts into charging the batteries at various
RPMs. I'm trying to determine how many amps it puts out at idle,
essentially. Does anyone know how to determine this?

I would like to see the community come up with an open standard that would
kill off NMEA.  It could stay purely ascii, be bi-directional, easy to use,
no binary mumbo-jumbo.  It could be extensible like XML.  Best of all it
would be free for everyone including manufacturers.

In the commercial marine and Megayacht world CAT 5 runs everywhere on
these boats connecting PLC's to enterntainment systems, to
communication systems right into PC based NAV. Most of this is based
on industrial standards rather then marine standards. It works well

I have a friend on a cruise in the Caribbean trying to use his
Globalstar sat phone for email. Looking at the sat availability for
his area he can only see a bird for about 10 or 15 minutes at one
time. He is using Vista on his laptop. When he gets a connection to

Perhaps I missed an announcement in here while I was out cruising, but I
see that AIS class B was approved.  Yeah!
http://www.panbo.com/archives/2008/09/class_b_ais_finally_the_fcc_order.htm
l#more

Hi, A year ago, I bought a LCD TV which tunes analog and digital
channels.  I first tried to use the VHF masthead whip as an antenna
with poor results, same with rabbit ears.  I made a horizontal wire
loop out of a bucket lid and a  twin lead to coax transformer to hang

I recently purchased an ICS NAV-5 Navtex that came without an antenna.
Reading user guide and docs on the web I can purchase and fit a NAV 4
passive antenna or an active VTRONICS ..
Being inquisitive I wondered what is in these?

Could anyone advise please
1 led drawing 10mA off a 12volt car battery,how long would
take to use  up 1amp of the battery.
Thanks.

This problem was solved by doing a full software reset and
recalibration. It works fine now.

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