I have 2 standard vhf with ais. It shows you all the boats around you and interfaces with my Furuno and Garmin chartplotters. They will show you boats that are dangerously close as well as giving you info on boat name speed direction cargo and calculate closest distance and time to closest distance. I find it very helpful and have used it to hail cruise ships that seemed to not be seeing me and were on a very close approach while i was fishing. You can select the boat on the vhf and go ship to ship direct vs hailing them and waiting for a response. They do not transmit your position-if you want that you need to buy a dedicated AIS transmitter.
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