LightListManager User GuideIntroduction to LightListManager and This User Guide
LightListManager is a program that will download and display the contents of the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) Light Lists from the USCG website. The Light Lists describe all of the navigation lights and marks in the U.S and its territories. The lists are published in xml files on the USCG website, and are updated weekly.
The purpose of the program is to maintain a current set of Light Lists on a PC and to identify any changes that have been made in those lists. The program can also produce a radar-like graphical display of the lights and marks within a given distance of a known (e.g., ship's) position using a NMEA 183 data stream from a GPS and other NMEA 183 talkers.
The program can also export selected entries in the lists to a GPX or KML file. The GPX file can be used to import the entries into a chart plotter as waypoints. The KML file can be used to import the entries into Google Earth for display as placemarks.
This User Guide is divided into the sections shown in the panel above. You can click on any of these titles to display the first page of that section. if you move the cursor over the clicked section title you will see links to subsections (if any) that allow you to move to specific topics.
Screen Captures and Other Graphics in This Document
This document uses screen captures to illustrate the text. The images on each page of the document are, in most cases, too small to see any of the detail. If you have already downloaded and installed the program it is best to run the program beside this document and perform the functions as they are described in the text. If you have not installed the program, then you can click on any of the images to open a full resolution copy in a separate tab in the browser.
Testing of this application
I try to test this software thoroughly before I publish an update, but I do not have a formal test plan for each release. Nor do I go back and test functions that I do not believe were affected by the changes. Consequently bugs do show up. I try to fix them as soon as I am aware. This often results in a series of published updates that are partial fixes or introduce new problems. So my suggestion would be to delay for a day or two installing the latest version the first time the program notifies you of an update (see the Installation section).
I only have win10 systems for testing, so this application has not been tested on any other version of Windows. Also, some of the program forms are very wide. They work fine on my navigation system, which has a 15" screen. They might not work so well on smaller screens.
If you do encountered a bug in the program, please let me know. You can use the Bug Report process (still under development) from Help menu described in the Bug Reports section of this document, or just send me an email at the address on the bottom of this page.
About the Light List Contents
Using this program and the associated Light List files as an aid to navigation requires a reasonable level of confidence in the accuracy of the data produced. This program does not modify the conents of the files provided by the USCG, and I do not represent it as a navigation program. I use it (and offer it to others) as augmentation to purpose designed navigation software. That said, I do have a reasonable level of confidence in the USCG provided data in the xml files. This confidence is limited to the navaids designated as "FD". The files also include navaids provided by organizations other than the USCG, designated "PA". I have a much lower level of confidence in the data on the "PA" navaids. My understanding is that the USCG accepts no responsibility for that data and normally will correct the data only when provided with changes from the responsible agency.
Currently Volume 4, which covers the Gulf coast, contains one "PA" navaid with a longitude of 92 E. Where I am berthed on the Ortega River in Jacksonville, FL there are a set of buoys designated with light characteristics. All of those buoys went dark during Hurricane Irma in 2017. They are still designated as lighted in the xml files and only one of the buoys has been identified as "LT EXT" in the Local Notice to Mariners. Apparently the city or county has never notified the USCG that all of these buoys are temporarily or permanently unlit.
So I use the data on the "FD" navaids with a reasonable level of confidence, but I have a very low level of confidence in the "PA" navaids. Even so, I often see typos in the "FD" entries that are not corrected until the next update. A typo in the lat/lon for a light can be a significant error. The program "Update Details" function (see Find Updates for details) can make those errors obvious, but it does not flag them as anything other than a changed to the data. I usually import all location changes into my chart plotting software so I can evaluate the change and disregard it if it is obviously in error.
