"Edgar" wrote in
news
Hi Larry.
Maybe you can answer this one for me.
I imported my boat from USA and it was equipped with a nice little
Standard
Horizon Eclipse + VHF set.
Over here you need a licence to use VHF even on a pleasure boat and
they refused to licence this set for me, saying that it had 'American
channels' on it and could not be licenced in Europe.
I had to state on my licence application exactly what set I was using
and.had to replace it with a locally approved ICOM set.
I had powered up the Standard Horizon and channel 16 seemed to be the
same and all the other channels had familiar numbers. I found no
problem picking up ship-to ship traffic either.
Certainly there were some additional channels, which I gather were
weather
channels, which were unfamiliar to me...
Are the niumbered channels the same everywhere, even if in different
areas their designated usage may vary?
Do you think they were unreasonable to make me take this set out?


Many of the channels on VHF are "duplex" channels where you transmit on
a totally different frequency than you receive. "Simplex" channels
transmit and receive on the same frequency, like Channel 16 on 156.800
Mhz.

In different parts of the world, the channel bandplans evolved
completely differently. Maritime Telephone Operators on duplex
channels, is a good example of why. National governments had no
coordination until the mess that was created was taken over by the
International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland.

Standard Horizon must be really short on disk space in their pitiful
website, so the owner's manual of the Eclipse Plus and all the old
models is gone, but you'll find a U/I button on the front of it. U
means US channels and frequency sets. I is for Canada and International
channels on the rest of the planet. Why you got rejected for a license
for it is this button which allows you to go to the US channels they
don't want you to have access to, which is kind of stupid.

A word about this specific radio. I had one in my jetboat. It's a
piece of crap! Water leaked in around the poorly sealed "waterproof"
speaker in the front of it. When, not if, seawater leaks in around the
speaker it drops straight onto the main circuit board right under the
speaker. If you have it mounted pointing slightly upward so you can see
the front panel and point the speaker at you, the tilt on the main
circuit board will cause the seawater leaking in to run back across the
board, eating everything in its path on the way. This I could tolerate.

But, alas, the water finally comes up against the back wall of the radio
inside the "waterproof case" and cannot escape. The main RF power
amplifier of this radio, and most VHF radios, does NOT GET SWITCHED on
and off by the on/off switch! The amp is a class C FM amp and NORMALLY
draws no DC power when idle due to its Class C biasing.
HOWEVER.....HOWEVER, when sea water leakes into the case around the
crappy speaker, it POOLS UP around the BIAS PINS of the main RF power
amplifier IC BRICK at the back of the circuit board...DRIVING IT INTO
CONDUCTION! The IC merely gets hot, very hot but not hot enough to blow
itself. Mine drew 3A of steady current and the rear heat sink
disappated 36 watts of heat....UNTIL IT KILLED MY DAMNED BOAT BATTERY
DEADER THAN DEAD, sitting on the trailer under the cover.

Of course, after getting the trailer backed down the ramp in line with
the rest at the public boat ramp....THE BOAT WAS DEAD MEAT when I wanted
to play!

It took me a while to find the constant current load causing the battery
to drain out......

Just thought you'd like to know for when yours leaks.....

I put in an Icom M59 and it never faltered....

The Standard was given the "Deep Six Standard Funeral" and is free for
the diving in the middle of Charleston Harbor if the dredge missed it.