Gear

Raymarine Axiom 2 Pro long-term mini-review

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This is a bit of a departure from what I normally write here, but today I’m going to talk about our chartplotter, the Raymarine Axiom 2 Pro S 9″. Now, as a forewarning, this is going to be a pretty critical review but I’m not criticizing the software or hardware engineers who built this: the responsibility for the quality level lies solely on management and the bean-counters. They are the ones that determine product priorities and development budgets.

I call this a mini-review because it is not a comprehensive overview of all the software on the Axiom 2 Pro, but focused on what we use regularly and the issues I’ve noticed. With over two decades of experience as a software quality engineer, I’ve got a pretty good idea of why these issues occur in software, and usually a pretty keen eye for bugs and quality issues. Note that I have the latest version of the software installed and have continually kept the unit on the latest software version ever since installing it a year and a half ago.

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Solar panels and ethernet

While we finish the Raymarine install–just some final mounting things to get done that have been waiting on materials to arrive–plenty more has been done. More of the Raymarine gear is installed, including the rudder sensor and linear drive, the SeaTalkNG/NMEA2000 network has been running beautifully for weeks now, and I’ve gotten the Signal K server all set up. With the last step, I also added a RuuviTag environmental sensor outside that is linked to the CerboGX over bluetooth, providing temperature, humidity, and pressure data.

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Gallery

Spring arrives in February this year

It may not be spring by the calendar, but the plants and birds sure think it is. We’ve gotten a very early spring here on the west coast and all the local birds are busy with mating displays and nest building. The normally easy-to-shoot Anna’s hummingbirds are non-stop bundles of energy right now, chasing each other around in mating displays. The only shot I got of one this morning was of a resting male with a bad lighting angle:

Anna's hummingbird (male)

Anna’s hummingbird (male)


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2014 Photo Year-in-Review: Equipment

(Don’t bother reading this post unless you’re interested in the equipment side of photography, you’ll be bored)

Within a week of the beginning of 2014 I bought my first super-telephoto lens: the Sigma 120-400mm f/4.5-5.6. After renting large primes (notably, the Nikon 300mm VR and VRII, ~$3000 and ~$5500 lenses, respectively) from Glazers, a local camera equipment and rental business here in Seattle, I decided it would be worth my while to buy something with significant reach for myself. While those Nikon lenses were way out of my budget (not just the primes, zooms as well), I was able able to pick up the Sigma for about $900. An expensive bit of kit, no doubt, but comparatively reasonable.

Something like 90-95% of the shots I took during 2014 were with this lens, and I’ve been very pleased with the results. As I tell people, “you need a big lens for little birds.” While I feel I’m ready for an upgrade, I’m still able to consistently get great results, and I’ll be keeping this lens around as a backup for a while.

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