The icom is compatible with the current AIS. On the radar the ships can be identified and called directly with, Digital Select Calling.

Sci Fi, but if you can identify what sets work with what, you'll have a safer ship. I'm selling my old icom, which will work with AIS, but not the commercially useful DSC on the MA500TR transponder.

How can a ship retain power longer?

TandEadapt, has had numerous battery issues, leading to expensive resolutions. A couple years ago some of the highest standard batteries were installed, leading to a bill exceeding over £500. That's enough to buy a descent chart plotter with NMEA 2000 and most instruments for reading depth, wind, speed and other neat data.

The batteries go flat quite easily, even when they are heavy duty and kick ass. So what can you do? Here's some neat information for my deprived deckhands:

Take 400 amps batteries with a 24 watt bulb for example:

12v into 24watts goes 2

Vaults into watts gives you amps

2 amps are taken out of 1 battery every hour

So depending on your ships charger and power usage, you can predict an idea of what's going on. That's when you can start getting technical about it.

By using LED lights rather than regular ones you can reduce the power usage drastically.

By buying a basic Battery Meter, you can actually watch the power usage and charging clearly enough to know what's happening about the acid boxes that we fall victim of draining now and then.

Here are pics of us installing a simple meter on, TandEadapt.