M. Baker wrote:
Husband bought the 17' Lund Mr. Pike boat last week. Need a marine
radio. Have no clue what to get. Plans to go out into Lake Michigan at
times, as well as smaller inland lakes.
Help - any recommendations appreciated!!


Good advice so far. A few more things...

For small inland lakes, a cell phone will work best since few people
monitor a VHF on small, recreational, lakes.

There have been suggestions to buy a fixed VHF or a hand held. You
really should have both. A fixed unit has more power and a longer
antenna so your range is much higher than a hand held unit. If your
battery is swamped or you lose power for any other reason, a hand held
will still work.

The longer the antenna, the better. VHF is "line of sight" and while
that may seem like a long distance, it's not as far as you might think.
For example, an 8' antenna mounted 3 feet above the waterline (11'
overall) can only transmit and receive about 4.5 miles until the horizon
blocks the signal. This will be more depending on the height of the
other antenna but you can see how short the distance can be.

Standard Horizon and Icom are great. I had the Icom and only replaced
it with my Standard Horizon after the rechargeable battery stopped
taking a decent charge. Also consider Raymarine. They make some nice
fixed units. I still use my Ray45 that I bought in 2001.

Dan

In article ,
Dan intrceptor@gmaildotcom wrote:

For small inland lakes, a cell phone will work best since few people
monitor a VHF on small, recreational, lakes.

Not sure for the small lakes, but you may be way better off with VHF, at
least if it is equipped with DSC and hooked up to a GPS:
See http://www.boatsmart.net/viewstory.p...d=70&year=2003
You should have high mounted coast guard antennas by now if the plan has
been followed.
These will reach 30-40 nautical miles, provided you have a fixed mount
VHF (which has 25W transmision power vs 5W of a handheld).
A handheld unit is useful as a backup should fire damage the battery the
fixed mounted VHF is hooked up to - which it usually does. But then a
17' boat is not that big.

If it works as I would guess, you can send off an emergency call with
all the details in 10 seconds of your time.
It will contain the nature of the distress situation (man over board,
fire, aground etc), the precise location and your boat's registered
identity (MMSI, linked to information of size, kind, contact numbers etc
of vessel) automatically until it gets acknowledged by USCG. I hope you
will never need it but if you do, you will be glad you have DSC+GPS. No
more guessing, no more spelling.

See GMDSS and DSC keywords (on google, or eg
http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/marcomms/...ss_systems.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_..._Safety_System

HTH

Marc

PS: Over here in Europe using mobile phones for emergencies on sea is
strongly discouraged - because it will only allow you to call one
station instead of all stations within reach, because some numbers are
not permanently watched, because you may be in an area not covered,
because commercial vessels will not play relay, because you do not reach
professional help etc - but of course use it if it is all you have.

--
Switzerland/Europe
http://www.heusser.com
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