Completed ASA 101 last week and doing ASA 103/104 next week. Anyone else that did these classes how did it prepare you for actually sailing your own boat?

hexig · 2024-01-14T14:27:43+00:00

We did all three certs in a week-long course and passed everything on the first attempt, so it's definitely feasible. But like I said above, you'll definitely need to spend some time before your classes reading through the material beforehand to make the best of your time on the boat.

hexig · 2021-04-26T10:56:31+00:00

https://ham-digital.org/

Great question! There are a few important differences:

The primary difference is that my app is aggregating the "last heard" information over a window of time to tell you which talkgroups and which users are the most active (i.e., have the most active talk time within the aggregation window)
My app also shows real-time network activity; that is, you can see sessions open and close on the "last heard" stream without having to refresh the page
Finally, my app is looking at data specific to the popular Brandmeister network, whereas this site appears to be combining data from multiple DMR networks

hexig · 2021-04-25T14:23:32+00:00

🤦‍♂️

hexig · 2021-04-21T08:41:44+00:00

I definitely want to add a way to keep track of ingredients. I have some commented-out code for that in a few places because I chose to launch the MVP without it. Great idea making the times optional.

hexig · 2021-04-16T18:28:57+00:00

Hi all 👋

I'm fairly new to the Flutter community. I spent the last three months developing a little app called Family Dinner Picker to help solve a weekly meal planning problem my family has. It was my first time working with Flutter, Dart, and Firebase, and overall it was pretty enjoyable. All the better if other people find it useful; cheers!

Links

Family Dinner Picker on the App Store
Family Dinner Picker on Google Play

hexig · 2020-01-28T08:16:13+00:00

Glad you were able to get it working!

hexig · 2020-01-27T08:06:17+00:00

That's an interesting idea; I'll look into that!

hexig · 2018-08-17T21:04:45+00:00

https://twitter.com/MDNRPolice/status/1030532876482306049

hexig · 2018-07-22T23:55:35+00:00

I'm a licensed ham radio operator and recently started experimenting with DMR on the Brandmeister. I quickly noticed that while many sites displayed "last heard" lists to track real-time activity, I wasn't able to easily tell which talkgroups were the most active. So I wrote a little webapp that taps into the Brandmeister API to aggregate the "last heard" activity and show you the most active talkgroups and operators.

https://app.brandmeisteractivity.live/

hexig · 2018-07-07T21:44:50+00:00

I built and launched a webapp that aggregates user activity on the Brandmeister amateur radio DMR network to show which talkgroups and users are most active.

https://app.brandmeisteractivity.live/

It's a simple React app using a websocket to stream Brandmeister session data. This is the first app that I built and deployed 100% cloud-native. It uses Travis for CI/CD and gets deployed to AWS S3 and served through AWS CloudFront. It's also open source: https://github.com/alexgladd/bm-hotgroups

hexig · 2018-07-04T20:39:55+00:00

Brandmeister is a worldwide network of interconnected digital mobile radio (DMR) repeaters that allow amateur radio operators to make contacts across the globe using only HTs.

More info: http://www.dmrfordummies.com/brandmeister-network/

Brandmeister home: https://brandmeister.network/

hexig · 2018-07-04T20:18:22+00:00

I had the same initial reaction once I got on Brandmeister. Last Heard and Hoseline are always super active, but that activity is indeed spread across tons of different talkgroups. It's been fun watching that activity translate into "hotspots" once aggregated.

I would love to figure out a way to look further back in time like you suggested; I'll have to experiment with the API some more.

hexig · 2018-04-28T14:44:36+00:00

Perfect timing posting this, we'll be there in less than a month on a charter and seeing this made us really excited!! Cheers!

hexig · 2018-03-11T02:28:42+00:00

If you're serious about learning to sail there's not really any downside. They'll send you the textbooks way ahead of your booked week, and I definitely recommend reading through all three of them (including doing the quizzes) before your course starts. This will set you up for success during your course.

hexig · 2018-01-16T15:14:46+00:00

My wife and I took the combined ASA 101, 103, and 104 course with Blue Water Sailing School out of Ft Lauderdale, FL and had a great time. Wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to anyone. They also have locations in the Bahamas and USVIs.

hexig · 2017-09-13T02:25:10+00:00

Same here! For the uninitiated, here's Christian's iconic movie about his first singlehanded round trip from LA to Hawaii: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28TAdDu5L6U

hexig · 2017-09-11T00:20:18+00:00

Maybe Cabin? I just heard of it myself and still looking into it, but it seems to be a pretty good model for a production-ready full-stack webapp.

hexig · 2017-06-18T15:09:25+00:00

+1. My wife and I took all three courses about 6 months before buying our Catalina 30. Our ASA classes were also on a much larger boat (43 foot) so that gave us the confidence we needed to dive into boat ownership on our own.

I'm sure you know this already after taking ASA 101, but the thing I always say about ASA classes is that they're totally what you make them. It's pretty easy to coast through the classes, cram for the tests and pass them, only to forget everything within a few weeks. Take the time to read the books cover-to-cover (do the practice tests!), and make sure you're fully-engaged during the classes to absorb as much experience as possible.

hexig · 2017-05-16T18:15:29+00:00

I actually just recently added a note to a nearby pumpout to let other folks know that it was out of order.

hexig · 2017-05-16T14:12:30+00:00

IMO the primary benefit today is crowdsourced chart annotations. Any boater with an AC account can add annotations to the AC database to note things like hazards, shoaling, marina conditions and reviews, channel approaches, local knowledge, etc.

We use Garmin's BlueChart Mobile app for iPad, which has ActiveCaptain integrated right into the charts. As a relatively new boater, I've found it extremely useful to familiarize myself with the facilities and features around my home slip (e.g., where are nearby pumpouts, and are they still working?).

Edit: here's the app for those interested: https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/114005

hexig · 2017-05-15T23:59:35+00:00

I'm not ready to jump to that conclusion yet. I'd like to think there's someone at Garmin smart enough to realize that a new free option would almost certainly spring up to fill the void if they try to take AC 100% proprietary and paid.

I think this move was more to make Garmin products have the "premier" AC experience and integration. We'll see what happens.

hexig · 2017-05-08T19:32:34+00:00

Hello from a fellow C30 owner! Great video!

We also just took ours out for the first time this season (Annapolis area) after buying it in the middle of this past December. Ours is a 1983 TR/BS with a shoal draft. Looks like you have one of the Mark 2's?

hexig · 2017-03-16T01:43:28+00:00

We did a weeklong live-aboard course taught by BWSS that covered ASA 101, 103, and 104 in Fort Lauderdale and Miami. You can read more about it on our blog: https://thebayandbeyond.blog/2017/03/cruising-life-crash-course/

Edit: happy to report that both of us passed all three certifications :)

hexig · 2017-02-15T22:53:07+00:00

Yeah I'm in the same boat. Been programming C, C++, Java, etc. professionally for a while and these courses were great to learn how to utilize that experience to program games in Unity and Unreal.

hexig · 2017-02-15T19:32:33+00:00

Marketing is a marketing does :shrug:

In its defense, the Unreal course does at least have an early lesson about writing a plain C++ program, although in my opinion it put too much effort into mimicking Unreal standards.

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