On Sat, 19 May 2012 20:06:52 -0400, wrote:

On Sat, 19 May 2012 13:24:28 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Sat, 19 May 2012 12:20:00 -0400, wrote:

On Fri, 18 May 2012 21:18:30 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

http://shop.delorme.com/OA_HTML/DELi... ection=10047

Looks like a great deal for cruisers like you.
Running around the Estero bay, I can usually hollar loud enough to
reach someone on shore ;-)
If not I could walk home.

===

It could also be relevant for people who hang out in the Everglades or
some of the other back country with limited or no cell phone/VHF
service. The low country coastal regions of the Carolinas are
notorious for communications gaps. Some of the small boat fisherman
who go 50 miles offshore in center consoles or small cuddy cabins
could also benefit. We once had to rescue a 20 something center
console with an entire family aboard because they had lost power and
were drifting towards the cliffs on the south end of Block Island,
Rhode Island. The cliffs were blocking both their cell phone and VHF
signals even though they were close to civilization.

I am not sure the Everglades is really that remote these days with all
the towers on Tamiami trail, Marco, Flamingo, Everglades City, East
Dade etc

I don't know about these new flip phones but my buddy ran around all
over the 10,000 islands and his AMPS66 phone with a high dB gain
marine antenna always got out. My car phone always worked too up and
down Tamiami trail and Alligator Alley, even before we had a tower
every 2 miles.
Our old PTs (Motorola Portable Terminal) operated on the cell band and
I got to the Island Park tower from the ranger tower in Chokoloskee
one day. (45-50 miles) That may have been the record. That was data at
4800 BPS tho and a lot of retries to send a few SDLC packets. I doubt
you could have talked.
If I was in trouble I would try a text if the phone was shaky. A
moment of connection would get your SOS out.

===

The 10,000 islands are is covered just fine. Going down south to the
Little Shark River and Cape Sable area, not so much. We had to
rescue a guy 5 or 6 years ago with a down engine on his flats boat.
He couldn't get a call out to his buddy who was fishing a few miles
away on another boat and he either didn't have a VHF or his buddy
wasn't monitoring channel16. We stumbled upon this guy while we were
exploring around in the dinghy and ended up towing him a couple of
miles him back to his base camp. We were about 10 miles back in from
the inlet.

In another instance several years later we heard a mayday call while
we were transiting north a few miles off of Cape Sable. A bunch of
people in a Boston Whaler had parked themselves in the mangroves and
couldn't get out. They were unable to get anyone by cell phone and we
were the only ones to hear their distress call on the VHF. We relayed
to USCG on VHF with our bigger antenna mounted high up. If that had
failed we could have used the Single Side Band rig.