Boating Electronics: something for every boat
Boating electronics includes all electronic gear relating to navigation, boat performance, communications, safety and entertainment.
Boating electronics cover such a wide range of applications that almost every boater -- even with the most modest boat -- will find something here. Obviously someone with a small boat without electricity will have different requirements from a person with a large, ocean-going powerboat, but there are many portable, battery-operated and hand-held devices.
Today GPS (Global Positioning System) is perhaps the best known form of navigation. It is widely used, especially in the United States, and has almost made dead reckoning and the use of sextants obsolete. (More on this in a different page of the site.) There are many different brands, offering everything from simple hand-held devices without mapping/charting capability suitable for small boats and dinghies, to high performance mounted versions that offer chart-plotting, satellite weather, satellite radio and even sonar. All have the same basic functions of telling you what course to steer to reach a pre-programmed destination; they indicate in which direction you need to turn to get back on your course, and they tell you the speed at which you have been traveling. Those with chart-plotting capabilities show your position on a chart. It's not quite an exact position, as accurcy can vary, although it can be determined within 6 meters most of the time. But in a narrow channel that means that you need to use other forms of navigation such as looking for channel markers.
Another type of boating equipment is radar , which is another widely used navigation and safety device. Radar enables you to "see" through rain, fog, and high waves and spray. They can indicate all kinds of hazards from small boats to very large ships, channel and other markers and coastlines. Today most radar functions are combined with other navigation functions as described above -- chart-plotting, weather, sonar...etc. In order to have a radar antenna, you need to have some place above a cabin top or on a mast to mount it, which means the boat needs to be fairly large.
All of these instruments described above need displays. At one time, every instrument had a separate display. Today many of those displays have been combined, so that everything that the instruments are sensing can be seen on one display at the press of a button -- and you can choose the type of display, including monochromatic displays or color.
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