4 Weeks. Requires approximately 5 hr per week of study time

Dates

This online course is not yet available, as such. Please see our Home Study Course, which includes correspondence with instructors via the General Navigation online discussion group. The CD part of that course contains an echart viewer and 4 echarts along with instructions on how to solve the practice problems electronically.

If you do not want the full course, but just want to practice with echarts, then select our Chart Problems book and the Echart Supplement CD (which can also be downloaded). This combination will offer a lot of practice problems, but no actual training materials. The serial numbers, however, qualify for a WebCard so you can post questions in the GPS and eChart discussion or other groups.

Course description

This course is a supplement to our course on Inland and coastal navigation. We cover electronic nav in that course, but this course specializes in navigation by GPS using e-chart navigation. We always encourage using paper charts on some level in parallel, but e-charts are so convenient and so powerful an aid to navigation that they deserve special attention. Also despite their convenience, there is still much to learn to apply them in the safest and most efficient manner, which is the subject of this course.

How the course works

Please read the general description of How the Courses work. Those notes apply to all courses. You can sign up for a course anytime the enrollment is open. If the course has already begun, you can still join, but will need to submit the quizzes sequentially.

The course is offered using special training versions of e-chart navigation programs, which are provided with custom made electronic training charts. At present we have one course using Memory-Map Navigator and we are preparing courses using other charting programs as well. We also teach the use of electronic tide and current programs. The practice exercises are taken from our home study course in coastal navigation.

Prerequisites

The Starpath Inland and Coastal Navigation Course or equivalent training or experience is required for the GPS and e-chart Course. Certain parts of this basic knowledge is presumed during this course.

Student Objectives

• Vector versus raster charts...
• How e-charts are selected, stored, and used. Sources, etc
• Optimum display presentations (windows, scales, defensive comptuter driving)
• Use of derived functions such as COG, SOG, SOA, XTE and SO ON.
• Coordination of e-chart position presentation with radar and depth sounder
• Planning routes and selecting waypoints
• Use of electronic tides and currents

Certification

At present we do not have certification exams in this topic beyond our own course completion exam. Often the general nav cert tests from other organizations have a few questions on the topic, but none we know of is very detailed or specific to this particular aspect of navigation.