Moving SAR patterns on NavNet Units

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone. This is my very post here on this forum. Allow me to introduce myself: My name is Pilot Anthoni of the Bermuda Pilot Service.
Recently our service just purchased a Gladding Hearn 61ft Pilot / Rescue cutter. She serves as a dual purpose vessel with piloting being her primary duty.
This lovely vessel was fitted with the furuno NavNet unit's with everything intergrated (auto pilot, radar, sounder). Our units has proven to be top notch, wonderful and user-friendly. :furuno

lately we have been undergoing many offshore Search and Rescue deployment's. The problem we have with these navnet is that our shore based Rescue Centre usually generates a search pattern for the boat using some sort of software and transferred to a SD card for our use. this has been wonderful us thus far. However this search pattern cannot be moved to a different position once loaded on to the NavNet's. For example, lets take the expanding square search pattern.....if we ever have to move this entire pattern to search another area there is no way of doing this with the NavNet units. Or is there a way????
The most practical way in doing so is to manually enter many different waypoints to achieve the new search pattern in a different area. Can you imagine doing this in rough seas and how much time it will consume?

My question to Furuno Tech is: Can patterns be moved as a whole pattern to another position on the chart to eliminate manual plotting of waypoints?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Capt. Anthnoni L.

 

[Johnny Electron]

Welcome Capt. Anthnoni

The NN3D has been well received by many of our Coast Guard, Boarder Patrol, Military and Harbor Police units. I am glad to hear you are enjoying it. The NavNet 3D currently has no way to shift an entire group of points (like a group move feature) but I will bring up the possibility with our development folks. Overall, the NavNet 3d is a developed product, so it is unlikely to see a requested change like this, be implemented but we can ask. If anything; maybe they can add the feature to the developing TZtouch or some newer system in the future. I have a couple of suggestions that might help you.

1. Create multiple search grids and save each grid area on your SD chip. You can restore waypoint files from the SD card in a matter of seconds. You can have TONS of save files on one SD card. When you are done with one search area, just load the next. The NavNet will flush the existing grid of points as you import the new grid from your SD card.

2. If you need to move a grid “package” of points a set distance; take the grid file of points (exported from your NN3D) to a PC with Microsoft Excel. The NavNet 3D stores these points in a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file format. You can open it in Excel and edit them directly in the spreadsheet table. (Like adding 50 mins Lat or 50 mins lon to each waypoint; moving the entire grid by that amount)

Welcome to the Forum.

 

[Anonymous]

It would be a very useful tool to have a small user interface appear, when selected, where you could select a search pattern and then put in parameters, such as search leg length, track spacing and speed. Then you could pick the starting point from the cursor or a lat/lon position. It would appear on the screen as a route. These "Search Routes" should stay on the screen and new "Search Routes" should be able to be layered over top to show saturation of the search area.

This "App" if you will, could be available to be uploaded as an update to existing software.

This search tool would be a valuable asset to most everyone. If your favorite hat blows off and you just have to find it, this would help. If there is a reported wreck and you are looking for it to fish or dive on, this would be great. In the case of search and rescue operations this of the greatest importance. I would think every search and rescue organization, including the USCG, would absolutely have to have this upgrade/App.