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The Shipping News page has been developed by David Hogan in conjunction with the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering, University of the Aegean, Greece and utilises the AIS (Automatic Identification System) for shipping. AIS is initially intended to help ships avoid collisions, as well as assisting port authorities to better control sea traffic. AIS transponders on board vessels include a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver, which collects position and movement details. It includes also a VHF transmitter, which transmits periodically this information on two VHF channels (frequencies 161.975 MHz and 162.025 MHz – old VHF channels 87 & 88) and make this data available to the public domain. Other vessels or base stations are able to receive this information, process it using special software and display vessels locations on a chart plotter or on a computer.

We have a base station here in Littleham, installed in the Village Hall, which is continuously listening for local (Bideford Bay, River Torridge and Bristol Channel) marine AIS traffic on the above referred frequencies. When such traffic is received it is fed into a central location on the internet where it is decoded and transformed into the dynamic map that appears on our Shipping News page.

For dynamic detail about our local base station see here.

For current ship movement details specifically being handled by our local base station see here.

For current ship movement details being handled by all base stations see here.

The equipment being used at our local base station to achieve this is as follows:

For more information regarding The Littleham & Landcross Shipping News service please contact the Administrator.

Return to the Shipping News page