"NOYB" wrote in message ...
"Mike" wrote in message
om...
Ahoy,

When heavy weather moves in at the house, the first place I go to is
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/radar/latest/ to get an idea of the storm
location
and the storm track. It is a wonderful tool that would be handy to
have
while boating. I can't afford mobile Inet on the boat (last I checked
$80/month). Any one using a cheaper service?

I was brainstorming (pun intended) with a buddy about the feasablily
of
transmitting the NOAA radar service over the weather channels.
The radar image for the locale area could be transmitted (in digital)
over the standard weather channel, with a slow baud rate to avoid
using
a lot of radio bandwidth. Taking 5-10 minutes to update wouldn't be a
problem. A display (PC) would connect to the marine radio, decode and
display the radar.

The weather radio is already in place, most boats have marine radio
and PC's
are getting cheaper by the day.

Any thoughts?

I can get the weather map on my Nextel phone...but it only works out about 5
miles from land.

Would it really take that long to download over the radio waves? My cell
phone takes a few seconds.

Lets see,
My NOAA chart is 320 x 320 pixels, or 102400 pixels.
Lets say 8 bits per pixel, so 102400 bytes of uncompressed data.
Now add header/error checking so 123000 bytes.
The marine radio band can reliably handle say 300 baud.
300 / 10 bits/char (8 data bits 1 start bit, 1 stop bit)
30 char second. 102300/30 = 3410 sec/chart.
3410 sec / 60 sec/min approx 56 minutes/chart.

Well, damn, another great idea shot down by cold hard facts.

Thanks for the reply.
Mike