Harlen David wrote in
:

I am new to boating and am also a licensed HAM, General class. I have
seen references to HAM radio and boating but haven't been able to glean
what the benefit might be.

Thanks...Harlen



Welcome, Harlen.

Ham radio is becoming more and more important to offshore sailors as the
commercial stations, like ATT's HF operators, go dark. WOM in Miami is no
longer on the air, as are WCC and the other commercials. HF is closing
down to marine interests as the big boys, who always paid the freight for
the "marine operators", go to satellite comms. Almost any time of day,
offshore stations can call the Maritime Mobile Traffic Net on 14.300 and
find some ham willing to handle their traffic. It's also a meeting place
for ham boaters, without some government shore station bitching at them for
the idle chitchat, which as you know is what ham radio is for.

While it is illegal to use a ham radio that's had its transmitter opened up
to work on any frequency, there are lots of them on-the-air all over the
place with memory channels programmed for the marine frequencies. On our
boat, the legal opposite is true. We're using an Icom M802 150W marine
radio into an Icom AT-130 autotuner to the 60' mainmast backstay on a 41'
ketch. No tuner is really necessary on 40 meters...it's 1/4 wave!

To open the M802 transmitter to all HF frequencies, hold down MODE + TX
together and press the number 2 key to toggle it into wide open. Press the
RX key to get the channel readout into frequency mode and the left knob
becomes the cursor mover while the right knob becomes the VFO, giving you
frequency control in 100 Hz, 1, 10, 100 and 1000 Khz steps across the band.
Works well as a ham rig. I like playing around with DX right from the
dock...(c;

73 DE W4CSC
Larry