NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Cap'n tips
From: Rick Emerson
Date: 1999 Feb 13, 18:54 EST
From: Rick Emerson
Date: 1999 Feb 13, 18:54 EST
Robert Cairns writes: > I am about ready to upgrade from Navmaster III to The Cap'n. You can save > some work by pointing out those oddities and typos. Ordinarily I'd reply off-list but I want to be sure my comment about The Cap'n's quirks isn't misunderstood by the list at large. After a moderate amount of tinkering around with various features in the calm and dry safety of my office, The Cap'n has worked quite well despite a number of problems traced to an upgrade to Win98 (I'm backing out Win98 right now). Whatever typo I found was of so little consequence that other than recalling seeing it, I can't recall where. It stood out mainly because it's the only typo I can recall seeing. One quirk I did see repeatedly is a loss of centering when using "intellegent zooming". This feature which is very useful keeps selecting the most appropriate scale chart for the area being displayed. If, for example, you're looking at a 1:40000 chart and want to zoom down to get a close look at a feature and a 1:20000 chart covers the area, this chart is brought up automatically. Conversely, zooming out will invoke the next smaller scale chart (e.g., 1:80000). When zooming in, however, occasionally the center of the new, larger scale (smaller area) chart is no longer anywhere near the center used with the previous chart. I was looking at the Portland, ME area and zoomed in to look at Peaks I but found myself looking at a spot well to the southwest of there. I'm not sure *why* this happens and will accept it may well be an error on my part but it can be frustrating on occasion. Another minor but irksome point is the handling of multiple coastal pilots. I have regions 2, 3, and 4 (covering the Maine/Canada border to Norfolk, VA) loaded. When asking for the Coastal Pilot info for, say, the Cape Cod Canal, all I got was information about the first region I loaded (the Chesapeake). It's a fairly task to select the right Coastal Pilot (Options>Preferences>Charts, I think) but a smarter process for selecting the right volume would be nice. I've worked out routes of varying distances, from short daysails to 3-4 day trips along the coast. Laying out the routes has been easy and so is adjusting the routes after they're laid out. I've worked a little with the celestial nav. features but I haven't done enough to comment meaningfully. What I have seen, however, looks quite servicable. The Cap'n isn't perfect (nor does Nautical Technologies claim it is) but I expect to be finding new features and functionalities for some time to come. And this highlights the program or packages's weakest point: the documentation. It's just not as thorough as I'd like. Going back to the question of changing Coastal Pilots, the on-line help files don't seem address the issue directly. The fix took a bit of poking around to find but, and this is perhaps the best demonstration of why the weak documentation isn't a major issue, it was fairly easy to locate and use. I've looked the Jeppesen package and, quite simply, it's not ready for prime time. The potential is there and it has some attractive features but I didn't have to think long about turning it down. I've also seen and used Navigate! on a PC (there's also a Mac version which seems very similar to the PC version) - save your money or spend it on more paper charts. I've also seen and used the Nobeltech product (the name's chaged a couple of times) and it's a little faster than The Cap'n but it didn't seem as navigator-friendly. The comparison between the two is The Cap'n is a navigation program written by navigators, while Nobeltec is a navigation program written by computer people. I'm willing to sacrifice a small amount of performance if it means making the job easier. Would I buy The Cap'n again? Yes. Rick S/V One With The Wind, Baba 35 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= =-= TO UNSUBSCRIBE, send this message to majordomo@XXX.XXX: =-= =-= navigation =-= =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=