Yes, but the airliner has an autopilot -- nobody is actually steering
it, which was part of my point -- you can do this on a large, stable,
vessel with an autopilot, but not on a small boat. And on the
airliner, you have two pilots, an air traffic controller, and there
are rules which pretty much everyone follows. And, finally, the
controller that's guiding the airliner is on the ground and has full
automatic radar plotting in three dimensions, so that every target is
shown with course, speed and altitude. The small boat radar doesn't
do automatic plotting and can do only two manual plots at a time on
screen.

Driving a small boat in Cape Cod Bay is a lot like driving a car in
heavy city traffic. For starters, there are lobster pot buoys every
100 feet or so that you have to dodge (the big boat throws them to the
side -- the small boat picks them up in the outdrive). Then you want
to keep on course. There's a fair amount of traffic, and unlike on
the city streets, it's not all moving in more or less predictable
ways, and, in the fog, you can't see any of it. And so forth.

Of course, I see people on the highway who drive and read the
newspaper at the same time. May they live long and prosper, but I
don't want them near me.....

Jim Woodward
www.mvfintry.com


"Ric" wrote in message ...
"Jim Woodward" wrote in message I would say
fairly strongly that you can't operate a radar in Cape Cod
Bay and drive the boat at the same time. There are too many targets
-- boats, bouys, fishing floats with reflectors, a few ships, and so
forth.

I'd say that depends entirely on your own individual ability to multitask
and set priority. Frankly, the workload you describe there is very low
compared to what the human brain can cope with when trained and practised
(try flying an airline into fog-bound La Guardia on a Friday night!). Marine
radar is so easy to use (only two dimensions) and boats move relatively
slowly and you can slow down and even stop in a boat.