I recently read a Coast Guard advisory stating that "some" Shakespeare
2050 antennas may interfere with your on board GPS and possible AIS.
Naturally, I have already purchased one of these antennas and will be
installing it soon. It would be a pain in the rear, but I may install
an on/off switch to the 12V amplifier for this antenna. Does anyone
have any experience with the antenna?

Dave

In article om,
"MV Gizmo" wrote:

I recently read a Coast Guard advisory stating that "some" Shakespeare
2050 antennas may interfere with your on board GPS and possible AIS.
Naturally, I have already purchased one of these antennas and will be
installing it soon. It would be a pain in the rear, but I may install
an on/off switch to the 12V amplifier for this antenna. Does anyone
have any experience with the antenna?

Dave


There was some problems with these a few years back, in that the
amplifiers would break into oscilation, on occasion and it was on
Marine Ch 16. (156.8 Mhz) Shakespear had to recall a pile of them
as they violated their Part 15 Specs. This could be a similar situation.
Best way to know is to have a compitant tech with a sp;ectrum Analyser
and look at the radiated signals from the antenna. I wouldn't think that
GPS signals would be effected, but AIS is in the same band as Marine VHF.

Bruce in alaska
--
add a 2 before @

Yea, take it back and get your money back before it's too late. They
are worthless POS's. Forget the interference problem... if you have a
recent one, that won't be an issue.

With mine, It would never reliably rotate when you wanted it to, but it
would whenever it felt like it. I would have it pointed where I wanted,
and it would just turn itself on and rotate to it's stop, one way or
another. The remote wouldn't turn it back. I went through something
like three wireless remotes and an older wired remote... none of them
worked. Nothing like watching your signal fade out while the antenna
pointed wherever it wanted and there was nothing you could do about it.
I threw the POS in the trash... total waste of money. I was so ****ed I
didn't even want to bother trying to return it. I talked to
Shakespeare's tech service more times than I could count. They actually
referred me to the company who made the antenna for them.

It's a great idea that just doesn't work in that format. Get a good
omnidirectional, or if you're really interested in TV, get DirecTV and
a follow-me TV unit.

I think the antenna model you are talking about with the unit that
rotates is a thing of the past. I had one of those 2 boats ago and you
are right - POS! I believe it was the model 2010. It never did work
right. I got the Shakespeare 2020 after that. It had a stationary
antenna with a little RF amp and I had no problems. This new 2050 that
I have also does not rotate and also has a 12V RF amp. Thank goodness
that they decided to make the amp box a LOT smaller. I bought the 2050
after seeing the results on a friend's boat while in deepest darkest
BC last year.
After a lot of digging, I found a Consumer Alert on Shakespeare's web
site. There were only some 200+ units that were manufactured in March
of '02 that were bad. Thank goodness the unit I bought was
manufactured in 2005.
I do have Sat on board. I have a pole mount that I had built that fits
very nicely into one of my fishpole holders. I have your standard
18" dish on the top of it and is wired into the saloon via the bilge
route. I also have an exterior cable TV connection.
Unfortunately, I have Dish Network. Their service is great, but their
options for receivers SUCKS! All I want is a small, non DVR receiver
with an RF remote - not IR. They offer no such thing. I have been
calling them for over a year and getting promises that such a unit is
in high demand by RV'ers, truckers and boaters - They kept telling
me that they would have an offering soon, but nothing has materialized.
Direct TV does have a very nice small receiver that is perfect! I
leave for vacation in 1 month. If nothing from Dish Network shows up
in the next week or so, I will be switching the house, cabin and boat
to Direct TV very shortly.

Dave

I have a 2020 and find that channel 3 is very noisy. Do you know of any fix
for that?

Otherwise it seems to be fine.

"MV Gizmo" wrote in message
oups.com...

I think the antenna model you are talking about with the unit that
rotates is a thing of the past. I had one of those 2 boats ago and you
are right - POS! I believe it was the model 2010. It never did work
right. I got the Shakespeare 2020 after that. It had a stationary
antenna with a little RF amp and I had no problems. This new 2050 that
I have also does not rotate and also has a 12V RF amp. Thank goodness
that they decided to make the amp box a LOT smaller. I bought the 2050
after seeing the results on a friend's boat while in deepest darkest
BC last year.

Actually, Edgar, I had a similar situation with that same antenna a
number of years ago. Every now and again I noticed that channel 3 was
bad, but other times it was fine. I tried turning off and on various
AC and DC circuits on the boat. The two usual suspects - the battery
charger and the reefer - had no affect when either on or off. I also
had a small AC fan running, but it also had no affect. But when I
killed the AC circuit for the back half of the saloon, the problem
cleared right up.
In that circuit was my VCR. It was fed through a two-way pushbutton
switch to select between the antenna and the VCR. With the VCR turned
on, it was sending out a modulated signal on channel 3. Apparently it
was strong enough to get through the two-way switch and into the
antenna! Once I turned the VCR off, no problems.
Hope yours is that simple.

Dave

I will investigate that scenario and report back.

"MV Gizmo" wrote in message
oups.com...
Actually, Edgar, I had a similar situation with that same antenna a
number of years ago. Every now and again I noticed that channel 3 was
bad, but other times it was fine. I tried turning off and on various
AC and DC circuits on the boat. The two usual suspects - the battery
charger and the reefer - had no affect when either on or off. I also
had a small AC fan running, but it also had no affect. But when I
killed the AC circuit for the back half of the saloon, the problem
cleared right up.
In that circuit was my VCR. It was fed through a two-way pushbutton
switch to select between the antenna and the VCR. With the VCR turned
on, it was sending out a modulated signal on channel 3. Apparently it
was strong enough to get through the two-way switch and into the
antenna! Once I turned the VCR off, no problems.
Hope yours is that simple.

Dave