On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:10:11 +0100, Marc Heusser
d wrote:

I am an electrical engineer and could quite easily get a licence for
amateur radio.
Does it pay off if I'd do that to access weather charts etc on a boat -
this year in Europe, both on inland waterways in France and in the
eastern North sea (between Germany, Denmark and Sweden)?

Apart from a transceiver I have a Mac that should decode the signals
without any extra hardware with MultiMode
(http://www.blackcatsystems.com/software/multimode.html).

Or are other options better?

There are a lot of weather sources on HF/SSB and you don't really need
a ham license to access most of them. Weather FAX is very useful,
most of the frequencies and schedules are he

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/marine/rfax.pdf

Voice broadcasts are listed he

http://www.docksideradio.com/PDF%20F...0Forecasts.pdf

There are also "weather routing" services available such as Herb
Hildenberg's broadcasts:

http://hometown.aol.com/hehilgen/myh.../vacation.html

You can also receive customized Gridded Binary (GRIB) forecast files
via Airmail or Sailmail. Airmail requires a ham license, Sailmail
does not. Both require a Pactor harware Terminal Node Controller
(TNC).

For serious communications and reliable fax reception I highly
recommend purchase of a Pactor TNC. Paired with the right tranceivers
and Airmail/Sailmail software, operation is menu driven from a PC and
almost automatic.

More info he http://www.docksideradio.com