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#41
posted to rec.boats.cruising
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On water in the Bahamas
On Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:28:29 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote: On Tue, 8 Jun 2010 11:15:30 -0700 (PDT), Bob wrote: and those same guys go around telling people they are not safe and stupid to cruise with out a tx ham radio. Have your fun soldering Heath Kits together but be realistic when it comes to reliable and safe at-sea communication. Almost all of the pleasure boats that I know who engage in offshore/international cruising have a marine SSB radio aboard, and they are not necessarily ham radio operators although some are. Many also have a sat phone of some sort and an EPIRB. We don't have a sat phone but do have the SSB and EPIRB. If we were crossing oceans I'd probably get the sat phone also, for redundancy if nothing else. A good friend did a cost analysis on long distance communication for his new Cat. He calculated that, not including installation, the SSB was more expensive then the Sat-phone, as well as being more complicated to install on a new boat. So he installed the Sat-phone. However, I don't believe that he is using Iradium, rather he is using a system that uses a fixed satellite with a foot print covering the Asian region and I know that he has coverage at least from Hong Kong to Thailand and the Malaysian peninsular. This system may be cheaper then Iradium which is a world wide system. I priced a similar system in Singapore a year or so ago and from memory you could get on the air for less then US$1,000, closer to 700-800 U.S. dollars. The "gimmick" is that the top-up cards are limited in how long a particular top-up is valid. If you don't use the minutes by a certain date they automatically expire. So you always need an extra top-up "card" on hand. This also applies to the pre-paid hand-phone systems so the idea is commonly used in communication systems here. He uses some sort of e-mail service and can send e-mail from his laptop on the boat to an Internet e-mail server somewhere, so his communication is equal to any Internet system anywhere. And of course, he can make voice calls. What I see here is that the older boats all have a pactor system and newer boats have Satellite phones. Cheers, Bruce (bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom) |
#42
posted to rec.boats.cruising
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On water in the Bahamas
A good friend did a cost analysis on long distance communication for
his new Cat. He calculated that, not including installation, the SSB was more expensive then the Sat-phone, as well as being more complicated to install on a new boat. So he installed the Sat-phone. What I see here is that the older boats all have a pactor system and newer boats have Satellite phones. Cheers, Bruce Yes, Bruce I wonder how much it would cost in LABOR to install everything a SSB radio requires. but im sure many here are knowledgble on that. SSB served the world well for years. But there are things out there now that can take its place and do it cheeper, faster, better But some people the club atmospher of being a HAM radio operator. Besides you dont even have to take morse code any more to be a HAM which Im sure drives many of the old timmers crazy! Personnally I sont use radio for pleasure or chit chat. I use irridium for business and emergency. If I want to talk to some one Ill jsut come here to my favorite discussion bard REC BOATS CRUISING The best darn little place to talk to friends i know and love XOXOXOXOoxoo Bob |
#43
posted to rec.boats.cruising
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On water in the Bahamas
On Jun 8, 2:15 pm, Bob wrote:
Personally, less complicated is better that is unless you are the second typ of person who supports use of ssb tx Are you kidding? HF is much simpler than sat phones. No not at all.......... you see I do not look inside the case. I look to reliability, expense, and ease of use. So when I say iridium is more simple campoared to SSB I am not refering to the inside circuits I refer to reliablity, ease of use, overall coast including installation and maintainence hours. I think you may be confused. In my experience, equipment reliability is very similar as long as the sat phone is permanently installed; if a handheld phone is used it is subject to all the damage due to drops and to water as any other bit of handheld gear. For ease of use the sat phone is certainly ahead, particularly on voice calls with the added benefit of a familiar user interface (just dial the number). Cost goes up on the sat phone with time as the minutes are still pretty expensive. Installation is similar in complexity. Maintenance is close to zero for both. One of the hidden "gotchas" of sat phones is that for any reasonable chance of a connection you need the car kit and external antenna. At that point you have all the same kind of installation woes of an SSB, although the power wiring is a good bit easier. The installation is much more finicky for the RF side of a sat phone. For me it comes down to the ability to get a message through. I don't want to spend more time than necessary hunched over the nav station. In my personal experience, based on use of both marine SSB and ham radio and of sat phones at sea on passage, sometimes with both on board, the message gets through more reliably with the radios than with a sat phone. On a delivery of a Swan 47 we gave up on the sat phone and used the SSB for everything. On Valentines Day the watch schedule was a mess as we all tried to make calls home. It took hours. I should have thought to look for a phone patch. There are certainly cruisers who are quite content with sat phones. Evans Starzinger and Beth Leonard come to mind. Very few have any experience with SSB - they made their choices and it turned out okay for them. Good for them. From what I understand of their sat phone installation, including the software and the special shoreside services for compression and discontiuous data transmission (to accommodate dropped calls), the sat phone rig is the most complex system there is on Hawk. Their are others who have struggled mightily to get sat phone installations to work properly. The same--good and bad--can be said about the experience of cruisers with SSB. Some of us have used both sorts of technology side-by-side; I for one would much rather have an SSB than a sat phone. and youre not a Sailing/Vessel you are a Sailing/Yacht (S/Y) Yacht seems rather pretentious. She is quite a nice boat though. A good friend did a cost analysis on long distance communication for his new Cat. He calculated that, not including installation, the SSB was more expensive then the Sat-phone, as well as being more complicated to install on a new boat. So he installed the Sat-phone. Interesting. Do you know what he included in running costs? Was it amortization of the up-front equipment costs over a small number of years? There is some quite good equipment available that isn't so dear, but if you just tick the box for an Icom 802 things can get pricey, especially for the international GMDSS version. The running costs though are quite minor. Winlink is free assuming a ham license and the commercial e-mail services are all around 250 USD / year. If you have to talk directly to someone who doesn't have a radio it is a bit more work. You can still find hams who run phone patches (free). On the commercial side ShipCom has reduced their rates to 1 USD / minute for calls to the US. Rates for other countries vary by country. It's definitely more work than dialing a sat phone but cheaper. I priced a similar system in Singapore a year or so ago and from memory you could get on the air for less then US$1,000, closer to 700-800 U.S. dollars. And then you go back later for a car-kit and an antenna after you become sufficiently frustrated with poor connections and dropped calls. If you are really unlucky, you dropped your sat phone over the side just after your laptop got doused by water since you were in the cockpit trying to get a connection after giving up below. 73 es sail fast, dave S/V Auspicious |
#44
posted to rec.boats.cruising
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On water in the Bahamas
rOn Wed, 9 Jun 2010 04:10:50 -0700 (PDT), Auspicious
wrote: On Jun 8, 2:15 pm, Bob wrote: Personally, less complicated is better that is unless you are the second typ of person who supports use of ssb tx A good friend did a cost analysis on long distance communication for his new Cat. He calculated that, not including installation, the SSB was more expensive then the Sat-phone, as well as being more complicated to install on a new boat. So he installed the Sat-phone. Interesting. Do you know what he included in running costs? Was it amortization of the up-front equipment costs over a small number of years? There is some quite good equipment available that isn't so dear, but if you just tick the box for an Icom 802 things can get pricey, especially for the international GMDSS version. The running costs though are quite minor. Winlink is free assuming a ham license and the commercial e-mail services are all around 250 USD / year. Yes, he was referring to initial costs only - assuming that he had nothing but VHF installed. His estimates were, as I thought I indicated, for initial cost only. If you have to talk directly to someone who doesn't have a radio it is a bit more work. You can still find hams who run phone patches (free). On the commercial side ShipCom has reduced their rates to 1 USD / minute for calls to the US. Rates for other countries vary by country. It's definitely more work than dialing a sat phone but cheaper. I priced a similar system in Singapore a year or so ago and from memory you could get on the air for less then US$1,000, closer to 700-800 U.S. dollars. And then you go back later for a car-kit and an antenna after you become sufficiently frustrated with poor connections and dropped calls. If you are really unlucky, you dropped your sat phone over the side just after your laptop got doused by water since you were in the cockpit trying to get a connection after giving up below. No, I'm fairly knowledgeable about radio systems and certainly knowledgeable enough to know when I don't know something and seek advise. The cost, if I recollect, was for a remote antenna, the phone itself and an interface box to allow connection to a computer. I honestly do not recollect the cost of calls other then that it was cheaper then Iradium and the area was limited to S.E. Asia due to the stationary satellite used. The "top-up" cards were $100 each and limited in life time but I do not remember anything else except that calls to various countries were made at varying costs. I might add that the friend works as a off shore drilling superintendent and mentioned that on the Rigs they don't use SSB phone patches for phone calls any more. They all use satellite phones. I believe that is where he got the idea to investigate them for use on his boat. Cheers, Bruce (bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom) |
#45
posted to rec.boats.cruising
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Ham email and blogs (was) On water in the Bahamas
"Wayne.B" wrote in message
... On Mon, 7 Jun 2010 22:20:12 -0400, "Flying Pig" wrote: Skip, off Shroud Cay If you have not yet done so, take your dinghy through the northern most creek on Shroud Cay to the east side, find the trail, and climb the hill. It's a great dinghy ride and a great view - best done at high tide. No kidding. At low tide, it's a very long walk to get there :{)) Had a lovely dinghy ride up the mangroves yesterday early evening, but grounded this morning before gettng in the entry... N0IA is one of my frequent tries; I have no current need for him, but I'll remember about the long connect times. My pactor is set for III but it bounces around depending on tx/rx strength... L8R Skip -- Morgan 461 #2 SV Flying Pig KI4MPC See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery ! Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog and/or http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog "You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it however." (and) "There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hand. You seek problems because you need their gifts." (Richard Bach, in Illusions - The Reluctant Messiah) |
#46
posted to rec.boats.cruising
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On water in the Bahamas
On Tue, 8 Jun 2010 13:24:52 -0700 (PDT), Bob
wrote: THe only reason ssb on boats is stil here is becuase there is a group of sprots/amature enthusisast who enjoy jaw jacking and then tell everyone who owns a boat they have to have one to be safe. Its like a cult similar to Amway or Scientology. Its a club gone birkshire..... Nonsense. I rarely talk on ours, everything is digital EMAIL, GRIB files, position reporting or weather FAX. Wouldn't leave home without it. SSB has come a long way in the last 10 years or so. |
#47
posted to rec.boats.cruising
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Ham email and blogs (was) On water in the Bahamas
On Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:24:20 -0700 (PDT), Skip Gundlach
wrote: My pactor is set for III but it bounces around depending on tx/rx strength... Assuming that your hardware is configured properly, Pactor 3 mode is selected in the "frequency" pull-down of the Airmail Terminal window. For example: 3580.0(P3) If the frequency selection is not followed by (P3), you will not connect in Pactor 3 mode. Do you have the latest firmware loaded in your Pactor controller? I upgraded mine last year and found that it improved my connection speeds. You can download the latest version he http://docksideradio.com/Firmware_update.htm It is also important to have the Pactor audio output level set correctly - too high and it causes distortion, too low and you are not transmitting at full power. Here is the process description from the Airmail help function: Setting Audio Levels: It is important that the audio output level from the Pactor mdem (TNC) is set appropriately. Unless direct FSK keying is used, the modem generates the audio signal that gets transmitted by the radio in SSB mode. If the audio level is too low then the output power will be reduced and communications will suffer. If the audio level is too high then the transmitted signal will be full power but may be distorted, perhaps severely, causing interference over a broad range of frequencies. Besides being prohibited by regulation, such "splattering" is also quite un-neighborly. The good news is that setting the transmit audio level is relatively easy. First, locate the adjustment. The PTC-II-family modems have software-settable audio output levels which can be set from AirMail using either the Options Window or the special audio-level toolbox from the Terminal Window (Set Audio Level from the Control Window). The KAM-98 and KAM-XL modems have software-settable audio levels, adjusted via the modem's CAL command (use AIrmail's Tools/Dumb Terminal window). The KAM+ controller uses an internal trimpot, R28, and a jumper (J9) to select a high or low range. The PK-232 and MFJ controllers use externally-accessible trimpots. Also keep in mind that for many transceivers, the front-panel Mic gain control is also active for the rear-panel audio input connection (even though the Mic my be disabled), so be sure the Mic control is set to the usual position before adjusting the controller. To set the audio level you need to be transmitting. The objective is to transmit full power, or close to it, without over-driving the transmitter and requiring the ALC (Automatic Level Control) to crank the power back, this is what causes distortion. Most ham transceivers have built-in power-output meters as well as an indication of ALC level. First, find an unused frequency and start transmitting using Unproto mode (Xmit Unproto from Terminal Window's Control menu). Starting from a minimum audio level, increase the audio level and watch the transceiver's output power meter - the power should smoothly increase to the maximum level, or close to it, with no increase on the ALC indicator. As you increase the audio level further, the output power will no longer increase and the ALC will begin to increase instead. Back off the adjustment until the ALC is near the bottom, well into the "green" range, and the power-output about 60% of maximum. Click the disconnect button to stop transmitting. Repeat this check on all of the bands used as there may be differences. (If the differences are large it may be an indication of RF feedback - see RF Isolation). For a PTC-II controller there is a second audio level adjustment for the Pactor-2 phase-shift (PSK) modulation. The PSK setting is typically about 30% higher than the FSK level. Selecting PSK Unproto will transmit a PSK signal and the PSK level can be adjusted as above. Note that the average output power will be lower, this is because PSK is a complex waveform and while the peak power is the same, the average power density is about half of the peak. Marine transceivers typically do not have an ALC meter, but the method is the same. Increase the audio level until the output power level is close to maximum and stops increasing, and then back off slightly. If there is no output power indication, a DC ammeter provides an excellent indication of output power. A transmitter putting out 100 watts will draw about 20 amps from 12-volt supply, and a marine transceiver will draw up to 30 amps when putting out 150 watts. So increase the audio level until the indicated current stops increasing, and then back off to around 80 watts- 15-20 amps. . Reducing the audio level, and operating with less output power, is much better than too high a level and a distorted signal. The effect of reduced output power is much less than one might expect. Your signal will be reduced by one S-unit by dropping the power to half; in other words to S-6 instead of S-7. A strong signal will still be a strong signal, and a marginal signal will be only a little weaker. Choosing the right time and frequency for good propagation, and minimizing any on-board electrical interference will have a much better payoff than trying to squeeze the last watt out of the transmitter. AirMail Help ©1997-2006 Jim Corenman |
#48
posted to rec.boats.cruising
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Ham email and blogs (was) On water in the Bahamas
Hi, Wayne, and list,
"Wayne.B" wrote in message ... Assuming that your hardware is configured properly, Pactor 3 mode is selected in the "frequency" pull-down of the Airmail Terminal window. For example: 3580.0(P3) If the frequency selection is not followed by (P3), you will not connect in Pactor 3 mode. Excellent pointer. I'd not been aware of that utility. I just did a scan and saw the ones which have that (p3) after them as they went by. I'll try to limit my tries in the future to those. Currently, of course, as you're seeing this, we are blessed with a connection off the northwest corner of Allens Cay, so telnet is nearly instantaneous, but I'm not blessed with such largess (that's a lady large, of course) in the middle of a passage :{)) Do you have the latest firmware loaded in your Pactor controller? I upgraded mine last year and found that it improved my connection speeds. You can download the latest version he http://docksideradio.com/Firmware_update.htm Just did that, too - mine was 3.9.x of the 3.3 build, now it reads 4.0 It is also important to have the Pactor audio output level set correctly - too high and it causes distortion, too low and you are not transmitting at full power. I've done that, before. My marker was that the tx bar on my 802 never got to the end, but about 2/3 of the way... L8R Skip, off to dive some more, then other activities Wilbur thinks are TMI :{)) -- Morgan 461 #2 SV Flying Pig KI4MPC See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery ! Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog and/or http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog "You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it however." (and) "There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hand. You seek problems because you need their gifts." (Richard Bach, in Illusions - The Reluctant Messiah) --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
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