The US Government announced yesterday that it would no longer print navigational charts after April as a cost-saving measure, but don’t run to your favorite Print On Demand retailer just yet, because you can now download pretty much every navigational chart in the NOAA catalog for free – at least for 3 months.
They’re now in PDF format, and The Man is allowing your download of the free files for three months starting today. What’s that mean? You can print them yourself. Pick up a Canon PRO-100 or similar wide-format prosumer photo printer for a couple hundred bucks (with certain promotions) and some weatherproof paper and you can wallpaper your house with NOAA nav charts for the cost of ink and paper. Still don’t understand how? First, find the charts you are looking for with the Chart Catalog. Write down the numbers of the charts you want, then go to the PDF list and right click on ’em. “Save linked file as” whatever you like, then print to your heart’s content.
And if you’re looking for better charts than NOAA’s ever were, look to the East. Comments? Here. Thanks to ‘one eye jack’ for the tip.
