HandsenSten wrote:I am trying to learn more about accessing data from the stations and mapping the data.
If you read the cited articles on AIS you will learn the answer to your questions.
The AIS system is a radio system. To receive AIS information you have to receive radio transmission from the ship sending the information.
This means the ship typically must be not farther away from you than about 20-miles, that is, you must be within the range of reception by your receiver of the radio signal sent from the vessel sending the AIS transmission.
To receive VHF Marine Band AIS transmissions you need an AIS receiver and a proper antenna. The AIS receiver will receive, demodulate, and decode the transmitted signal, and should also produce a data output signal according to NMEA-0183 or NMEA-2000 communication protocol containing the information that was sent by the ship.
You can then connect the AIS receiver data output signal to some sort of chart plotter display or other display device which supports the necessary AIS data groups being sent out from the receiver data connection. Then the display or whatever device you connect can use the data for whatever purpose its designers have provided. If the device that receives the AIS data payload is an electronic chart plotter, then the chart plotter MAY be able to create an indication of the ship position on the chart. Exactly how this will be presented depends on the chart plotter and what data was provided to the chart plotter from the radio that received the radio broadcast transmission from the ship.
If interested in the detail of AIS transmission, you can find complete descriptions of the methods employed in the applicable recommendations of the International Telecommunications Union document:
ITU-R M.1371 : Technical characteristics for an automatic identification system using time division multiple access in the VHF maritime mobile frequency bandYou can download a PDF version of the recommendation at no cost from the ITU website at
https://www.itu.int/rec/recommendation.asp?lang=en&parent=R-REC-M.1371-5-201402-I