With no disrespect to Mr Cavo, I feel the radar re-certification course is pretty bogus. We went through the five day course. This should be enough.
Most of us don’t have the huge ship screens to do the plotting, we work with mostly 8" to 10" screens. In harbor situations we don’t have time to mess around. We must make good judgements about the course of targets, etc.
Best small radar story: Outbound Kill Van Kull, zero dark thirty with really, (REALLY) cheap LED radar screen with slow refresh. A spider dropped down from the cabin ceiling and started chasing the dots on the radar screen. True!
The radar courses became mandatory because a moron could not distinguish s rsilrosd bridge from land. If people would do their jobs CORRECTLY and not cause sccidents that kill people, we would not have halfvthe courses we do.
The only other alternative is pull licenses after bonehead stunts and unfortunately they don’t pull licenses for stupidity.
[QUOTE=BMCSRetired;114099]The radar courses became mandatory because a moron could not distinguish s rsilrosd bridge from land. If people would do their jobs CORRECTLY and not cause sccidents that kill people, we would not have halfvthe courses we do.
The only other alternative is pull licenses after bonehead stunts and unfortunately they don’t pull licenses for stupidity.[/QUOTE]
That Mauvilla allision only extended the requirement to towing vessels and rivers. The radar observer unlimited endorsement has existed for a lot longer.
[QUOTE=EbbTide;114090]With no disrespect to Mr Cavo, I feel the radar re-certification course is pretty bogus. We went through the five day course. This should be enough.
Most of us don’t have the huge ship screens to do the plotting, we work with mostly 8" to 10" screens. In harbor situations we don’t have time to mess around. We must make good judgements about the course of targets, etc.
Best small radar story: Outbound Kill Van Kull, zero dark thirty with really, (REALLY) cheap LED radar screen with slow refresh. A spider dropped down from the cabin ceiling and started chasing the dots on the radar screen. True![/QUOTE]
Oj course Mr. Cavo is not responsible for the requirement. He is a fount of knowledge about the requirements though!
I think we would find there were radar observer courses and renewals before the Mobile RR bridge disaster. I think that event may have been the catalyst for inland radar observers. I see nothing wrong with renewing your observer, if you know what your doing it shouldn’t take more than an hour. But I’ve been in renewal classes where the student had to be taught the concept all over again. This is why we have renewals, some people have no retention and must be " re taught " what they should know, after all it’s simply relative motion. If people did everything correctly all the time and didn’t have accidents then we would not need a license. Yea, like that’s a reality. This may be the only industry where people seem to enjoy doing the job with the least about of professional education and certification possible. In fact some I’ve spoken to over the years ( ie GOM) seem to be proud of their lack of maritime knowledge and education.
[QUOTE=jdcavo;114110]That Mauvilla allision only extended the requirement to towing vessels and rivers. The radar observer unlimited endorsement has existed for a lot longer.[/QUOTE]
I knew that. Most good mariners don’t have a problem with the requirement and actually use it. However, there are a lot of people out there that only use what they learn at the required school to pass the course. That was my point. Celestial is the same. I use celestial to get my gyro error, a fix once a hitch to keep the rust off and to teach interested shipmates.
The only time I "used’ celestial was transiting from Alaska to Hawaii. I covered the Loran-C and GPS receivers and made the watchstanders use a sextants, alidades, compass, gyrocompasses and chronometer. They even used a stadimeter and got the range and bearing from a deep-draft. I checked our position once a day and made no corrections. We were only 8 nm off at the end. Not bad for a bunch of Coasties with no schooling.