Comments below:

"Larry W4CSC" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 03:47:00 -0800, "Ed Price"
wrote:

I would much prefer fiberoptic in a commercial or military vessel. It's
much
more secure and robust in the presence of a hostile RF environment. And
in a
commercial vessel, it shouldn't be a hardship to route sufficient
fiberoptic
cabling.

Fiber sounds great until you have to install it. Fiber requires
amazingly expensive equipment to splice and connector to it and
specialized training to do it right, things pleasure boaters will
simply not pay for. It's not an option when a large corporation or
the government bureaucrats aren't paying the bills.

I'm not an expert in fibre in any way, but have been around television
technicians when they are working with it. Ten or more years ago when I
first saw it being installed they were using $10,000.00/$20,000.00
cutting/polishing/splicing/testing gear on terminations. More recently I've
seen them using "cam terminations"?? which the technician used to install
connectors onto bare, freshly cut fibre using simple hand tools. They
didn't even seem to test the terminations except to confirm the head end was
receiving a good signal at the other end many miles away. So it seems to me
fibre is becoming much more user friendly. Perhaps we will see it in
pleasure boater marine use sooner than you think as prices come down due to
increased use in commercial computer network wiring. I can certainly see
advantages with no RF interferance or emmissions and no corrosion of
connections, etc.

snipped bit was here

Larry W4CSC

No, no, Scotty! I said, "Beam me a wrench.", not a WENCH!
Kirk Out.....