News
Signum Ops is developing a new release of DigTrakR developed for salvors of the 1715 Fleet along Florida's east coast, ready for release as DigTrakR186. The beta edition will be distributed to select operators in the first quarter of 2023. Information and tutorial videos can be found here.
The software is devised especially to make use of the 1715 Fleet maps developed originally by the Fishers and devised by Bill Moore. These charts, provided to sub-contractor salvors, are 2D drawings produced using AutoCAD and feature records of excavation over a period of more than 30 years.
DigFindR is a 64-bit Windows program, which will run on Windows 7 and on through the current release of Windows 10. It is a product that has a developmental history reaching back more than 25 years to original versions written specifically for cadastral mappers, based on computer aided drafting engines created by Oleg Kolbaskin. Over the years, the code has migrated through three releases of the dynamic link libraries produced by Oleg and had its most recent incarnation as MagTrakR, which was written privately to map magnetometry surveys. With the newest version of Kolbasoft's LiteCAD 2D CAD engine, particular code was developed to handle the attribute data in the 1715 Fleet maps. DigTrakR 1.1 as currently designed is directed toward 1715 Fleet operations, but it can be adapted for use by the scientific community at large. The program is equipped with the means to use an NMEA 0183 GPS interface.
"Finding X" is now available at Amazon!
Coast, what seemed impossible at first has, over five decades of toil, become
standard operating procedure. How to locate and recover the remains of the
wreckage is accomplished today using computerized technology and advanced
sensory methodology, but that was not the case when the first salvors of the
modern epic began exploring the many sites we know of, which are currently
spread out over fifty miles of coastline.
The progression of techniques employed to discover, recover, and document the
1715 Fleet shipwrecks begins with ardent adventurers, using hit-and-miss
methods, right through analog mapping schemes, and on to digital data collection
that is tried-and-true. "Finding X" gives the reader a brief glimpse of the
technological developments resulting from this enterprise, why they came about,
and how they came about.
In the prologue Taffi Fisher Abt provides the reader with an ample summary of
the problems encountered along with the solutions devised over time. In the
addendum the Mel Fisher Center, Inc. contributes excerpts from the Florida East
Coast Shipwreck Project reports highlighting germane issues covered throughout
the volume.
T. L. Armstrong gives the reader a lay-person overview of the practices and
defining circumstances that are the foundation of the salvor's craft, with special
notes on recent developments in the 21st century where software is a key element.
Taffi Fisher Abt T. L. Armstrong