On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:02:50 -0500, "Jack Painter"
wrote:


"Wayne.B" wrote
"Jack Painter"
wrote:
snippage

It's very clear thanks, but it doesn't really address my concern.

My concern is that there doesn't seem to be anyway to test it and see
if it's actually working as intended. My 40+ years of experience with
things electronic has lead me to believe that nothing should be
assumed to work unless it gets tested periodically.


Understandably. And aside from finding equipment such as Bruce mentioned
that could "read" the output sent to a dummy-load, there is no way to know
if your distress button will really take a valid output from your GPS, add
it to the programmed MMSI, and transmit it on Ch-70. That's the way it is,
and if you can come up with a convincing argument to change that, which
won't overload the whole system, by all means do so.

Most VHF DSC radios will show the position received from the local GPS
if they have not received a DSC call, so that will check that the GPS
is correctly connected to the radio.

If you have friends with a DSC radio, you can exchange routine DSC
calls and position requests, which should test most functions, without
needing to send an actual distress alert.









--
Peter Bennett VE7CEI
email: peterbb4 (at) interchange.ubc.ca
GPS and NMEA info and programs: http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter/index.html
Newsgroup new user info: http://vancouver-webpages.com/nnq