Come off it , amateurs. I hold the record. Frequently get ships about 3200
miles away. Odd though - distance from here to the line where the Equator
crosses the Grenwich Meridian is about 3200 miles.

Joking apart, here in the UK, I have freqently found ships displaying duff
information, and I suspect that if their GPS is not working, they display
their position as zero degrees east and zero degrees north. In fact on
Saturday I saw a freighter goind up the Thames, but announcing she was in
the way to Liverpool. The previous week we were watching a Roll on Roll Off
ferry, 400/500 foot long with no AIS signal being broadcast. It is a
brilliant system, but always to be used with a pinch of salt.

Phil


"Paul" wrote in message
...
I just received a SR162 dual-channel AIS receiver, which I will be using on
my sailboat -- the old single-channel SR161 will end up at home. I've been
testing at my house it these last couple of days, and have been amazed at
the range I have been getting. I've seen many ships 100 to 200 nautical
miles from my position, and last night saw one at 492 miles, and another at
673 miles" (this one was "Ikarugu", a freighter heading to Long Beach, CA)

Of course, I also moved my whip antenna from the deck railing to the roof,
which has to help a tiny bit. I am at about 1000ft elevation, 4 miles
from the coast, and 40 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Still, this
is so far beyond line-of-sight that it has to be tropospheric ducting.
Occasionally, VHF signals make the trip from Hawaii to California (about
2000 miles), and an interesting by-product of widescale AIS deployment is
that there are now all these AIS "beacons" spread out all over the oceans,
running continuously.

AIS DXing - who holds the record?

-Paul