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Short Wave Sportfishing[_2_]

On Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:43:50 -0400, wrote:

With a 3 watt analog phone and a good marine antenna cell coverage is
better in Florida Bay than VHF. When my buddy was making that limp
home from Marathon to Pine Island (the bent prop shaft thread) he
never lost cell signal but his VHF was useless

This was about twelve years ago back when our rural 911 system was
still in it's infancy. The Fire/Rescue services all chipped in and
set up the system and used volunteer operators until the towns chipped
in to hire dispatchers until the state could get it's act together.

I was on a midnight shift when I got a cell phone call off the Pomfret
cell tower. The call was from a boater in Long Island Sound off The
Dumplings near The Race - his boat was dead in the water, had no
power, battery had run out and couldn't use his VHF.

Took me a minute to figure out what happened - atmospheric ducting
took the signal and the first tower that was in the duct grabbed the
signal. :)

I transferred the call to CG New London and they took it from there.
Called me back a couple of hours later - they found the boat,
everything was fine.

I've often wondered what would have happened if somebody not familiar
with the physics of radio might have been on duty that night.