Marine Electronic Services Ltd will launch MAC ENC at the London Boat Show in January. MAC ENC is a new MAC based electronic charting programme capable of real time navigation. Its turns you MAC notebook into a full function electronic chart plotter and it accepts industry standard NMEA data from GPS, instruments and AIS receivers. It will provide an overlay of your current position, previous track and current course on detailed electronic charts. Waypoints can be created and edited at the click of a mouse and can include name, icon and description information.
MAC ENC is compatible with both raster and vector format electronic charts and works with Maptech BSB as well as Navionic’s e-charts. It also supports an overlay of weather data from freely available GRIB files which can be downloaded from the internet. This provides the user with an animated weather forecast that includes wind, pressure, temperature and swell information.
To make interfacing easy on a modern MAC or iMAC system, Marine Electronic Services Ltd offer a USB to NMEA adaptor for just £30 that allows traditional onboard NMEA systems to connect directly to the MAC via USB. What’s more, MAC ENC also supports ethernet and WiFi type data connections so your navigation system can be free of any cabled connections.
In addition to all of the normal waypoint, track and routing functions, there are alarms for anchor drag, waypoint arrival and cross track error. If the system is connected to an AIS receiver or transponder, it will calculate the closest point of approach (CPA) for any AIS target and also offers an overlay of AIS targets together with all of the vessel data.
MAC ENC is priced at £149 including VAT and will be on show for the first time at the London Boat Show Stand No. B20 in the North Hall and is available from www.mesltd.co.uk or by calling +44 (0) 117 911 4111.