"Keith" wrote:

Why in the world would you want a 911 only cell phone on the water,
when you should have a VHF, preferable interfaced with a GPS to call
for help?

He said that they were for his cars. Read for content instead of just
reacting.

You mean this quote, Rosalie? "Every boat, car and truck should have a
cigarette lighter-powered ol'
reliable bagphone stashed away in it somewhere."

I believe YOU should read it, and figure out what I'm responding to.

Rosalie B. wrote:
"Keith" wrote:

Why in the world would you want a 911 only cell phone on the water,
when you should have a VHF, preferable interfaced with a GPS to call
for help?

He said that they were for his cars. Read for content instead of just
reacting.

"Keith" wrote in
oups.com:

Why in the world would you want a 911 only cell phone on the water,
when you should have a VHF, preferable interfaced with a GPS to call
for help?



You're 20 miles off the SC coast. A thunderstorm cell snuck up on you,
we have them all summer, and dismasted you. For some unknown reason, the
diesel won't start. Maybe it got flooded while sailing when water backed
up into the exhaust over the anti-siphon loop heeled over, who knows.

You're a LONG way from Charleston or Beaufort. The mast, now hanging
under the boat by its rigging, is where the VHF antenna is pointed
towards the sea floor. You rig a temporary antenna. (Name 5 boats that
have temporary antennas in your marina. Ask around.) The VHF range is
now reduced from 30 miles to 3 miles. A coathanger wire stuck in the
back of the radio at the nav station doesn't have much range. You call
and call...noone is fishing in your range circle, so noone answers the
call. CG is way out of your range, so noone hears you. You're not near
any shipping lanes into Charleston or Savannah, so they're not going to
hear you.

You try your blazingly powerful .15 watt toyphone with the camera,
internet in color and video games. Nope...it's not within ITS two mile
range of a cell tower. The cell towers are along US 17 more miles inland
than your toyphone could reach by standing on the deckhouse.

You go below remembering that old bagphone some idiot on the internet
talked you into buying for $1 from Goodwill's Thrift Shop. You blow the
dust off it and plug it into the cig lighter plug in the cockpit. You
flip up its 3db antenna duckie and turn it on. A miracle happens as it
logs onto its AMPS tower that sits, nearly abandoned, 24 miles away on Mr
William's farm. You press 9-1-1-SEND and ask the emergency operator to
connect you to the CG. Stunned anyone would still have such a relic on a
boat, the Coasties are, at first, skeptical you are for real. However,
after having their asses kicked for killing 3 boys and an idiot sailor
aboard "Morning Dew" on the Charleston Jetties, they're forced to send
out the helo to help you.

That bagphone just may have saved your ass....maybe not. Geez, man,
they're only $1. Noone wants them....except you, sitting in your
disabled boat, waiting for the helo to arrive......

See why now?

Actually a 406 Mhz GPS-enhanced EPIRB is much better than a bagphone.
But, not many boats traveling up and down the coast have an extra 800 to
1600 dollars to spend on safety equipment they've convinced themselves
they'll never use.
http://www.shipstore.com/SS/HTML/ACR/ACR2776.html
http://www.watersports.alphanautical...duct_info.php?
products_id=892



--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.

"Keith" wrote:

You mean this quote, Rosalie? "Every boat, car and truck should have a
cigarette lighter-powered ol'
reliable bagphone stashed away in it somewhere."

Who wrote that?

I believe YOU should read it, and figure out what I'm responding to.

I shouldn't have to figure out what you were responding to - and I
wouldn't have to if you quoted some small part of what it was.

The post right above your post said
!
!A few years back I discovered the NAM module in my Technophone is in
!the handset, not the aluminum transciever box, so I bought two more
!"antique" Technophones on EBay for $20, keep them in my cars as 911
!devices, and switch the handset for my "live" one on long trips, to
!stay in touch. They use old "brick" camcorder batteries, so that's
!not been a problem. I'm into desert exploring, and with an 8inch(?)
!rubber ducky antenna, using a Jeep hood as a counterpoise, have been
!able to punch out to towers when the pocket cellphone folks can't
!get a signal at all. Once made a (marginally intelligible) callfrom
!a remote mountaintop where the nearest tower was over 40 miles away
!(but line-of-sight), technically impossible using digital.

I don't see the 'every boat.. should have' quote anywhere, so I've
either deleted it, or it was way back in the thread.

Rosalie B. wrote:
"Keith" wrote:

Why in the world would you want a 911 only cell phone on the water,
when you should have a VHF, preferable interfaced with a GPS to call
for help?

He said that they were for his cars. Read for content instead of just
reacting.

Larry wrote:
"Keith" wrote in
oups.com:

Why in the world would you want a 911 only cell phone on the water,
when you should have a VHF, preferable interfaced with a GPS to call
for help?



You're 20 miles off the SC coast. A thunderstorm cell snuck up on you,
we have them all summer, and dismasted you. For some unknown reason, the
diesel won't start. Maybe it got flooded while sailing when water backed
up into the exhaust over the anti-siphon loop heeled over, who knows.

...


I actually had a experience such as this, though not as extreme.

It was the during the first day of the delivery of our new catamaran
from Whitby (outside of Toronto) towards the Erie Canal in Oswego. We
were powering across Lake Ontario in large following seas, surfing at
13+ knots. The mast was down in preparation for the canal. After
doing the first 50 miles in about 7 hours, both engines started
cutting out. I, of course, was completely unfamiliar with the new
Yanmars.

The although the VHF antenna was hooked up, it's radiation pattern is
a disk, so most of the signal was going up or down. This concept
eluded me until the moment we raised the the mast and it suddenly hit
me why the lock tenders never heard the fixed VHF. Since then I've
always carried an emergency antenna. However, placed on deck, the
line of sight would only have been a few miles and since the lake
appeared completely devoid of life, its not clear we could have
summoned help.

The bag phone however, had a clear signal 60 miles to (I assume) the
CN tower in Toronto. The factory folks advised me that the rough
passage had probably loosened some sludge which clogged the
anti-siphon valves. I kept the engines going by manually pumping the
fuel pumps, and when we made Oswego we found that indeed the valves
were clogged. We never determined if it was manufacturing debris in
the tank, or a bad load of fuel, but we haven't had a fuel related
problem since.

Steven Shelikoff wrote in
:

Since the battery life of current phones is probably
5x better than your phone from the late 1980s it may be a tradeoff
you're willing to make.


"Battery life" in the old bagphones in all my vehicles isn't an issue.
They ALL have cigarette lighter plugs to power them. Batteries left for
years in the trunk until you need them are NEVER going to be usable, hence,
I only get ciggie plug-powered phones for emergency comms.

Even a "dead" car battery will run a 3W cellphone IF you take all the loads
off it and let it sit for 10 minutes to recover what little acid bath is
still in the dead cell(s). This is plenty to call 911, unless the battery
explodes, in which case you'd swap (in a boat) to the other battery bank or
(in a car/truck) to another car you flagged down using his power supply.



--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.

Steven Shelikoff wrote in
:

All of this comparison to the old analog phones is moot anyway since
they won't even be worth $1 after next year because there won't be
anything they can connect to.



I've been hearing this for over 10 years, now. The turn off date is in
2008, not 2007. It's 2006 in South Carolina at the moment. Of course,
that date has been pushed back many times...(c;

For $1 you can stand to take that chance.

--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.

Larry wrote:
Mark, have you noticed a new carrier tactic of NOT answering calls from the
old AMPS phones to 611 or *611?

Just tried it, roaming in San Diego. They answered.

On Fri, 08 Sep 2006 08:36:09 -0400, Larry wrote:

Pity. You're right about QUALITY...None of the little toyphones will ever
sound anywhere near as good as the narrowband FM radios in a trusty old
Motorola bagphone or carphone. Those days seem over.

Get over it Larry, nothing will *ever* sound as good as a Collins
KWS-1 on 75 meter AM phone either, but those days are pretty much gone
also.

Times change, we change along with them.

Wayne.B wrote in
:

Get over it Larry, nothing will *ever* sound as good as a Collins
KWS-1 on 75 meter AM phone either, but those days are pretty much gone
also.

Times change, we change along with them.



Obviously, you've never tried to wedge yourself into 75M AM on 3895...KWS
or no KWS. Of course, that rig would be "underpowered" on that
frequency...(c; Those boys are in broadcasting.

I'm all spoiled, now. I just got offline with a friend in Okinawa on
Skype. Life IS different, now. We're no longer slaves to Mother Bell
and the Telecoms. I change along with them, too.

75M AM was alive and well last time I listened to the monologgers, 40M,
too, in the day.

Change came quite natural to me. I was the first ASCII teletype station
in 4-land, on the air 15 seconds before it was legal at midnight just for
those braggin' rights. We had someone calling CQ ASCII in every call
district. Listen above 14.100 to the ASCII station, now on Packet.
You'll find them from 14.100 to 14.125 Mhz. I'm one of the reasons why,
much to the dismay of our Canadian friends who mistakenly thought no US
station would ever try to operate in the "Canadian Phone Band". They
were wrong, of course, and their jamming went on for years attempting to
run us off, which only hardened our position. You'll now find Canadians
fully integrated into the fun on ASCII/Packet above 14.100 Mhz. I was
there at its inception as WB4THE, at the time. I was also early on SSTV,
but soon lost interest as all ham equipment looks, basically, alike and
hams, as a group are BUTT UGLY. Go to any hamfest and see for yourself.

The old analog bagphone still has a place in emergency comms as long as
the towers are on the air. I won't travel without one.

AMPS is "new" compared to my battery-hoggin' old IMTS Carphone with the
rotary dial under the dash and the beast in the trunk. Someone uploaded
some old Broderick Crawford cop shows and early Perry Mason TV shows to
alt.binaries old time TV groups not long ago. Under the dash was my same
Carphones, used in the show. Ahh...those WERE the days!

--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.