"Larry" wrote in message ...

Would you be kind enough to elaborate? What's the rig, what are GRIBB
downloads and what's Herb? Thanks, Glenn.

I built a Quadrafillar Helix antenna from 1/4" stainless tube. Cost about
$60, very rugged and looks very professional. The reciever is a Hamtronix
R139 for about $120 but I may upgrade to a RIG receiver for a little more.
With WXtrack, Satmon and Satsignal shareware I automatically receive about 6
usable real time polar satallite pictures a day. From home in Macon I get
coverage from Hudson Bay to Trinidad and Colorado to the mid-Atlantic. Got
some great pictures of Frances just before she blew my antenna down. :-)
Anchored at Anegada I got much clearer coverage from Long Island to the
Amazon and Southern California to the Cannaries.

GRIB (sorry only one B) is GRidded Binary weather files. It is the standard
format for weather information. They are mathematical models of the weather
that you can use for animated forcasting using Digital Atmosphere and
several charting programs like Raytech and MaxSea. You can get full files
over the web or download chunks for the area you are interested in covering
3 to 7 days on Sailmail.

Herb is Herb Hilgenberg. aka "Southbound II". Guardian angle of all
Atlantic passagemakers. Provides free individual weather and routing advice
to cruisers from England to the Panama Canal broadcasting out of Canada on
SSB 12359.0 at 2000 UTC every day.

Glenn