VHF radio nostalgia.

jon hansen · Jul 7, 2017

still curious, any one know what the pink birds on ton's nav screen photo represents?

Parsons · Jul 7, 2017

The principle purpose for VHF on most of our boats is to hear these friendly words every Wednesday ... "Bay City Racers, this is the Race Committee on-station. The course tonight will be ... and the starting sequence will begin at 19:05". It makes my blood rush just to type the words!

Davidasailor26 · Jul 7, 2017

jon hansen said:
still curious, any one know what the pink birds on ton's nav screen photo represents?

Navionics shows a similar area near us. In our case it's a "Restricted area - Unknown, nature reserve: Mid-Atlantic (MA) Regulated Mesh Area". It looks like it's basically an area where the use of some types of fish nets are restricted.

jssailem · Jul 7, 2017

jon hansen said:
pink birds

Lobster Pot sites? Bird swarming areas? Maybe the nav.app was experiencing a murmuring...

Maine Sail · Jul 7, 2017

Ron20324 said:
The "in general" is the key. Like, "in general", if you have a fixed mount radio but would not be able to hear it in the cockpit anyway, "in general" it would do nothing but wear down the battery. Generally speaking, of course.

"In general" is just referring to the general summary of 47 CFR 80.310 for voluntary vessels.

Charles Erwin · Jul 7, 2017

That's 47 C.F.R. § 80.310. One cannot forget to include element A. Otherwise it is a sin approaching that of saying 'amps per hour.'

Charles

Gunni · Jul 7, 2017

The little birds icons let you know that the area is an environmentally sensitive area, so check your NTMs for further info. So yes, there would be birds in a NDZ. Round here that means no discharge not even from those ElectricSan heads.

jon hansen · Jul 7, 2017

thank you gunni

Maine Sail · Jul 7, 2017

Charles Erwin said:
That's 47 C.F.R. § 80.310. One cannot forget to include element A. Otherwise it is a sin approaching that of saying 'amps per hour.'

Charles

Guilty as charged, and if you can tell me how to make a section mark on an iPhone.....

Captain Larry-DH · Jul 7, 2017

I thought those were gulls setting on the water. I frequently mistake them for lobster floats.

Charles Erwin · Jul 7, 2017

Maine Sail said:
. . . if you can tell me how to make a section mark on an iPhone.....

Sure - hold down the ampersand key. Just do not confuse this with 'ampersands per hour.'

Hope this helps - bye for now

Charles

Don S/V ILLusion · Jul 7, 2017

jssailem said:
Illuminate Don... Common Sense is one of the "lost senses".

At least one person figured it out. Rick D.

Ken Cross · Jul 7, 2017

Don S/V ILLusion said:
At least one person figured it out. Rick D.

There is nothing common about sense.

Ken

genec · Jul 8, 2017

Ron20324 said:
The "in general" is the key. Like, "in general", if you have a fixed mount radio but would not be able to hear it in the cockpit anyway, "in general" it would do nothing but wear down the battery. Generally speaking, of course.

I turn it on, I leave it on 16, but I have the squelch turned up, as well as the volume... if someone is close enough, with a strong enough signal to break squelch, I pay attention.

genec · Jul 8, 2017

As an aside to some of the conversation, but keeping with the thread... maintaining the marine VHF radio on the bridge was one of my duties when I was in the Navy. I had to turn on and test the radio before entering any port... without me, we did not enter ports. GRIN.

It wasn't that big of a deal, but there were two switches that had to be turned on... and inevitably one of them would have been turned off... unusually the one on the power panel that also controlled the mast lighting... the bos'n mates that manned the wheel tended to just turn off all the breakers on that panel without reading the labels on them. So my job was to go to the bridge, and make sure that damn switch was turned on before we arrived at port.

The other issue was that some of the officers on the bridge tended to put the handset into their back pocket and walk away from the radio, which inevitably would either rip their pocket, or rip the handset cord. I kept a spare handset ready.

JRT · Jul 8, 2017

Good post, I monitor weather on my goldwing for my cross country trips and find sitting in the boat listening to it fun.

Charlie Jones s/v Tehani · Jul 8, 2017

Maine Sail said:
"Watchkeeping Regulations:
In general, any vessel equipped with a VHF marine radiotelephone (whether voluntarily or required to) must maintain a watch on channel 16 (156.800 MHz) whenever the radiotelephone is not being used to communicate.

Source: FCC 47 CFR §§ 80.148, 80.310, NTIA Manual 8.2.29.6.c(2)(e), ITU RR 31.18, 52.244"

Unless you are in the Gulf ICW, between Galveston and New Orleans- then you best be on 13, cause they do not use 16 between those two points. ALL traffic is on 13 Busiest section of the entire ICW, Port Isabel,, to Norfolk

Captain Larry-DH · Jul 8, 2017

Charlie Jones s/v Tehani said:
Unless you are in the Gulf ICW, between Galveston and New Orleans- then you best be on 13, cause they do not use 16 between those two points. ALL traffic is on 13 Busiest section of the entire ICW, Port Isabel,, to Norfolk

When I'm in areas like that I use tri-watch 9,13, 16 scanning

Michael Davis · Sep 24, 2017

Davidasailor26 said:
I fondly remember listening to the notice to mariners each morning with my dad when I was a kid. I guess that still could be done, but like you said, with the internet and cell phones there's really no reason to schedule around the CG's broadcast patterns anymore.

Oh, and if you both have iPhones, just use "find my friends" to share your location. Sending screenshots of maps is so archaic.

Just spent 5 months going up and down the west coast ( Victoria to Alaska and back ). Phoned my mom on all 5 days we had cell coverage. Not a reliable Nav. aid out here.