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Marc Heusser Marc Heusser is offline
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First recorded activity by BoatBanter: May 2007
Posts: 61
Default need marine radio

In article . com,
"M. Baker" wrote:

What do you all mean by "if you have GPS" for the DSC feature? He has
a GPS thing I got him a couple years ago, with the intention of using
for deer hunting. But is that the type of GPS thing you're talking
about, or something different?


The DSC receivers have an input for GPS. The protocol ("language") used
goes by the acronym NMEA (more precisely NMEA0183). So ideally the GPS
has an NMEA output (not all do), because then the DSC VHF radio will
have the position of the ship available automatically at all times, in
particular when sending an distress call. Otherwise you will have to
manually input the location before sending the distress call, or - as is
recommended procedure, store the location every 4 hours at the least,
better every hour in the radio to have it available for a distress call.

So ideally you would have a marine GPS with an NMEA output to hook it up
to your DSC VHF radio.
Otherwise any GPS unit will make do, with the disadvantage of having to
transfer the location info manually.

HTH

Marc

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