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.

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.

I comend your active mariner life! I also depart philosophically from
what is necessary to make ocean or NC voyages. I still believe SSB/Ham
installations adds too much clutter and potential problmes to boat to
warrent haveing one considering the alternative is has such a smaller
"foot priint" on a boat.

Yes, many "curisers" ahve SSB/Ham. But why? Tradition? The RDF is gone
I think inpart simply because no body could talk on it. LORAN is gone,
i think becuase no body can talk on it. BOth have been replaced by the
GPS and EPIRB, respectivly. 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.....

I sail with:

Barometer
sextant
GPS
EPIRB
VHF
Iridium

HAM/SSB reciever only. I get ot hear you guys yack, glean info and
then turn you off!
I also get weather fax that goes to laptop. the receive only radio has
nothing but antina and wower supply and it DONT take no 40 Amp circuit
to run!!!!!!!!

So what happens when all the satalites fall outof the sky.............
sextant, DR, barometer, weather fax. Getter on Bra !

There is no purpose for a ssb'ham, or as my swedish step dad who
commercial fished all his life called it, the AM set
On a boat a SSB has no purpose except intertainment.
Bob Rexroth (disabled)
Dell tech support
Ogden UT

"Bob" wrote in message
...
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.

I comend your active mariner life! I also depart philosophically from
what is necessary to make ocean or NC voyages. I still believe SSB/Ham
installations adds too much clutter and potential problmes to boat to
warrent haveing one considering the alternative is has such a smaller
"foot priint" on a boat.

Yes, many "curisers" ahve SSB/Ham. But why? Tradition? The RDF is gone
I think inpart simply because no body could talk on it. LORAN is gone,
i think becuase no body can talk on it. BOth have been replaced by the
GPS and EPIRB, respectivly. 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.....

I sail with:

Barometer
sextant
GPS
EPIRB
VHF
Iridium

HAM/SSB reciever only. I get ot hear you guys yack, glean info and
then turn you off!
I also get weather fax that goes to laptop. the receive only radio has
nothing but antina and wower supply and it DONT take no 40 Amp circuit
to run!!!!!!!!

So what happens when all the satalites fall outof the sky.............
sextant, DR, barometer, weather fax. Getter on Bra !

There is no purpose for a ssb'ham, or as my swedish step dad who
commercial fished all his life called it, the AM set
On a boat a SSB has no purpose except intertainment.
Bob Rexroth (disabled)
Dell tech support
Ogden UT





=======================[REPLY]======================


Right on, brother! Skippy has cluttered up his cruising experience with all
manner of unnecessary and burdensome crap. It indicates to me that he is
still loathe to cut the lubber umbilical that still binds him tightly to
shore side hassles.


Wilbur Hubbard

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.

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)

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

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

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)