I would like to have charts and sw on my new pc. Not for onboard charting just for looking up locations and planning On my old pc I loaded maptech without charts but while free it was a royal pita. Garman, campatable with my chart plotter seem pricy. What are folks recommending these days?
Chart and SW for pc
- Thread starter pdecat
- Start date
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2003
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- 12212
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OpenCPN and the free NOAA charts... openCPN is free and open source software adn works very well. It's not a resource hog, like so many programs these days so it will run on older machines. very intuitive interface...
no idea why anyone would spend money on software.
there is also SeaClearII, although i find the interface clumsy.
OpenCPN also works well with bahamian charts.
been using it for 2 years now, couple of round trips up and down the east coast, a trip to Houston and a number of runs to the bahamas... it's my primary planning tool as well as my main nav system underway with a Bluetooh receiver.
no idea why anyone would spend money on software.
there is also SeaClearII, although i find the interface clumsy.
OpenCPN also works well with bahamian charts.
been using it for 2 years now, couple of round trips up and down the east coast, a trip to Houston and a number of runs to the bahamas... it's my primary planning tool as well as my main nav system underway with a Bluetooh receiver.
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2000
- RO Number
- 3238
- Messages
- 4,831
+1 for OpenCPN as a "desktop planner". Price is right, too! 
no apparent problem installing the sw. It opens with a black screen and blue outlines just no charts. The NOAA down load site wasn’t clear where to find all the charts but I think i downloaded and unzipped the charts but i havent figured out how to connect the charts to the sw. When I open tools i see what looks like my entire directory but no idea how to find and install the charts, yet.