News | EQUIPMENT Safety Microsoft helps to
weather storm Microsoft is donating software at the market value of £5 million (US$7.9 million), to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) until 2011. The donation will enable the charity to focus its expenditure in other areas, such as the MOB Guardian. MOB Guardian, whose infrastructure runs on
Microsoft applications, is a man overboard and vessel locator system, developed by the RNLI to help reduce the number of deaths in the fishing industry. MOB Guardian consists of a base unit on a fishing
vessel and crew personal safety devices (PSDs) worn by the crew. The base unit automatically transmits via satellite
regular updates of the precise location of a vessel, its course and speed to the RNLI’s monitoring station. If a regular update is missed, the monitoring station tries to regain contact with the boat and if no further updates are received then an alert is raised, with the RNLI, which is then passed to the Coastguard so that a search can be initiated. If a crew member wearing a PSD activates it
manually or if they fall into the water, an alert is raised and transmitted within a matter of minutes to the RNLI operations centre. The information passed from the RNLI operations centre to the search and rescue agencies is accurate and up-to-date, detailing exact position, name of vessel and even first names of crew members. Using this technology, the search for the vessel or crew members becomes easier and casualties are reached faster. The donation from Microsoft will also allow the
RNLI to continue its investment in the Systems and Information Management System, which is also based on Microsoft technology and provides critical operator information to lifeboat crews. The system is currently in operation on the Tamar-class lifeboat, the latest all-weather lifeboat from the RNLI.
Propulsion GE Marine unveils
new engine range GE Transportation’s Marine business, Pennsylvania, USA, revealed its new inline medium-speed diesel engine family, the L250, at SMM 2008 in Hamburg. The L250 diesel engine is custom-designed for a variety of marine applications and will be available in six- and eight-cylinder configurations. The new inline design expands GE’s diesel engine
product offerings. “As one of the world’s largest manufacturers of medium-speed diesel engines, we
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listened to our customer’s installation, maintenance and operational preferences. With the L250, we leveraged reliable features of our popular V250 diesel family and designed the new L250 inline engine to address many of these needs” said John Manison, manager of GE Transportation’s Marine business, Erie, Pennsylvania. The L250 provides a fuel consumption saving of
more than 9% when compared to earlier designs, such as the GE V228 medium-speed diesel. Regarding emissions, the L250 can be upgraded at a later date to meet the future United States Environmental Protec- tion Agency Tier III emissions requirements, while adhering to current Tier II standards. In the six-cylinder configuration, the L250 offers
the following continuous outputs: 1498kW/2009hp at 900rpm; 1664 kW/2232hp at 1000rpm; and 1748kW/2344hp at 1050rpm. In its eight-cylin- der configuration, the continuous outputs are: 1998kW/2679hp at 900rpm; 2219kW/2976hp at 1000rpm and 2330kW/3125hp at 1050rpm. Many of the design attributes of the L250 are similar
to GE’s V250 diesel family, as the L250 features the V250 engine’s camshafts, fuel system, exhaust manifold, power assemblies, bearings and turbocharger. The mainframe has optimised ribs and an integrated
air manifold, and the crankshaft has wide webs and tangent fillets. Other new components for the L250 include the engine’s air and oil filters, fuel pump, low- and high-temperature thermostatic valves, and sea water pump.
The L250 is designed with engine-mounted accesso-
ries for ease of maintenance and installation and a power take-off system already included, therefore a separate auxiliary engine is not required. The L250 in-line series will be available commercially in 2009.
Upgrade Tyco upgrades
AMOS to fleet Tyco Telecommunications Marine Services division has announced that it will be upgrading its AMOS Maintenance & Purchase programme (AMOS M&P) to its entire fleet using very small aperture terminal technology (VSAT). Tyco recognised that software and hardware
onboard vessels needed to be light and flexible, especially for vessels continuously over a 30-month period. During the development stage, Tyco found that improvements needed to be made to its current model to reflect this. The AMOS M&P version 8.6 was the result of this. By using global VSAT infrastructure Tyco was
able to deploy the software to all vessels and client machines that currently require software updates.
Ship & Boat International November/December 2008
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