cougarmeat
Paddler
Re: VHF features and controls:'bells and whistles' or progre
When I bought my Marine VHF, I picked a model that had an AA battery pack option. It was pretty expensive for a tiny piece of plastic and for a few dollars more I could have just bought a spare rechargeable. But I like the option of using easy to find (an borrow from other equipment - flashlights, etc.) AA's.
I bought the new Marine VHF because of the way my WestMarine 150 (WestMarine is just re-branded Uniden - matching batteries, etc.) was behaving. To be fair, maybe I got a lemon but I use it so infrequently, by the time I discovered the problem, I had no "return" option.
The problem was, when the squelch was on, even at the tiniest level, it wouldn't pick up the weather broadcasts with the standard small antenna. I had another ham friend make me a portable two element beam antenna to both enhance NOAA weather report reception and give me a stronger, albeit directional, transmit signal.
An there was another problem in the basic design. Apparently, though the regular transmit channels (9, 16, etc.) are on agreed upon frequencies. The frequencies of the weather stations channels - 1 to 10 - are not. So Channel 4 on the West Marine radio was Channel 7 on the Standard Horizon. Before I realized that, it was even more confusing because side by side, one appeared to pick up Channel 4 while the other did not. It seemed like the one not hearing the strong weather station on channel 4 was not working but that was only because it was picking up the same station as channel 7 - something like that.
I had my friend craft the antenna because I though the reception was poor in various places in the island groups. it turned to my Radio was poor. And maybe it wasn't so poor, once it could receive, but just a little bit of squelch on the WX channels stopped it.
I don't know if that problem transferred to the Marine Channel side - but I didn't want to worry about it. I've always had good luck with Standard and they were on Sale. So I picked one up.
When I bought my Marine VHF, I picked a model that had an AA battery pack option. It was pretty expensive for a tiny piece of plastic and for a few dollars more I could have just bought a spare rechargeable. But I like the option of using easy to find (an borrow from other equipment - flashlights, etc.) AA's.
I bought the new Marine VHF because of the way my WestMarine 150 (WestMarine is just re-branded Uniden - matching batteries, etc.) was behaving. To be fair, maybe I got a lemon but I use it so infrequently, by the time I discovered the problem, I had no "return" option.
The problem was, when the squelch was on, even at the tiniest level, it wouldn't pick up the weather broadcasts with the standard small antenna. I had another ham friend make me a portable two element beam antenna to both enhance NOAA weather report reception and give me a stronger, albeit directional, transmit signal.
An there was another problem in the basic design. Apparently, though the regular transmit channels (9, 16, etc.) are on agreed upon frequencies. The frequencies of the weather stations channels - 1 to 10 - are not. So Channel 4 on the West Marine radio was Channel 7 on the Standard Horizon. Before I realized that, it was even more confusing because side by side, one appeared to pick up Channel 4 while the other did not. It seemed like the one not hearing the strong weather station on channel 4 was not working but that was only because it was picking up the same station as channel 7 - something like that.
I had my friend craft the antenna because I though the reception was poor in various places in the island groups. it turned to my Radio was poor. And maybe it wasn't so poor, once it could receive, but just a little bit of squelch on the WX channels stopped it.
I don't know if that problem transferred to the Marine Channel side - but I didn't want to worry about it. I've always had good luck with Standard and they were on Sale. So I picked one up.