Awfully Stupid Question re SSB Reciever/WeatherFax

[sentientcj]

Hi all. PLEASE forgive this question, but I couldn't find an answer through search.

Aside from all arguments about cutting costs, I understand one can receive weatherfax information with an ssb receiver (saving me thousands on buying a full ssb). What I don't get is this: crossing oceans w/out a sat phone or the like, my understanding was that if one can receive weatherfax info into one's laptop one can still get the (arguable) information one needs. But with these cheap ssb receivers I am seeing for a hundred bucks or so I don't see how they hook to your laptop, and consequently, how that magical weatherfax info shows up on my laptop...

Very confused, electronics confound me Thank you for any help or links (willing to read if it's already been said before).

[sentientcj]

with jvcomm, if that makes any difference.

[Bash]

You have to have the ability to tune into the USB (Upper Side Band) mode. The inexpensive portable units are problematic because many can't tune in small (10mz) steps necessary. Kinda like trying to thread a needle with inch-thick rope.

[Jim Cate]

Ok, now that the wise guys have answered, here's the real story. You tune in the wefax signal on the receiver which produces a strange sorta warbly audio tone. You take a signal from the headphone jack of the rx and input it into the microphone input in your computer. You have resident there a program, of which JVcomm32 is an example, and this software converts the warbly tone into the picture on the screen, one line at a time. Takes about 10 minutes to download a complete MSL chart.

Getting the exact right frequency is important, so that less expensive receivers may not have fine enough tuning steps (10 Hz, not 10 Mhz, Bash) to get it spot on.

Does that fill you in ok?

Cheers,

Jim

[drruss]

Nice answer Jim.

[sentientcj]

Great, thanks so much for the responses. I'll do a search for preferred AIS Receivers to hopefully find one with the tuning specificity you mention.

Much appreciated!

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by sentientcj

Great, thanks so much for the responses. I'll do a search for preferred AIS Receivers to hopefully find one with the tuning specificity you mention.

Much appreciated!

Whhooops... don't think that you really mean AIS, do you?

Jim

[sentientcj]

SSB rec, not AIS. Trying to figure these two things out is burning a hole in my brain.

[transmitterdan]

It took me a while to get the weather fax working but it does work. The receiver has to be SSB. If you are listening for NOAA weather fax this is a link to their information:

Marine Radiofax charts

Other governments have similar schedules posted on line.

One thing I learned that I wish I had been told. The software uses your computer's sound card to digitize the warbly tones. The sound card is not precise in how many times per second it samples the warbly tones. But the weather fax software needs to know this to a fairly high precision. Read the instructions that the software provides on how to manually adjust for the sample rate variation. My computer just made a picture of random dots until I fiddled with the sample rate parameter in the wefax software. After getting that to work I have very clear weather fax displayed on the computer.

Dan

[Dsanduril]

I've had reasonably good luck playing around with a Tecsun PL660.

Amazon.com: TECSUN PL660 Portable Radio FM/LW/MW/SW/SSB/AIRBAND PLL World Band Synthesized Receiver, LCD Display, Dual Conversion: Electronics

Or try Ebay for a used Ham radio. Just because it can transmit doesn't mean you have to. If you have room (the cheap ones are usually kinda big) you can get a good SSB receiver that way.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by sentientcj

Great, thanks so much for the responses. I'll do a search for preferred AIS Receivers to hopefully find one with the tuning specificity you mention.

Much appreciated!

Search eBay for a degen 1103. Works fine receiving wfax, great little radio. Then download jvcom (free) and you're off. I had no problem receiving wfax from Caribbean to UK with that setup into a laptop.

[Ozbullwinkle]

I'm not trying to create thread drift but just throwing another option into the mix for your consideration.

Instead of buying a SSB receiver which will be useless to you in an emergency have you looked at the Iridium Extreme Satphone which not only gives you worldwide communication ability through the Iridium network but it also gives you the added very valuable feature of yacht tracking to enable those on shore like family and friends to keep track of your progress and current position. If you also add the Accesspoint accessory this will give you WiFi access to onboard equipment like laptops & iPads etc so that you will have full internet access for weather reports etc.

We have just purchased one of these satphones after looking at all of the options in the marketplace. If we had not also required long range communication functionality for a forthcoming Pacific crossing we would have gone for the Delorme inReach which is very impressive and cost effective but this only gives you yacht tracking with SMS ability and a SOS function.

[Ozbullwinkle]

Further to my post above I meant to post the link so here it is:-

Home - Iridium Extreme

[aboutgone]

Weatherfax - Make Your Own | YachtPals.com

[sentientcj]

Thank you Dan, that will be extremely helpful once I have all these pieces in place. So if different gov'ts issue these, who's do I look to say mid-Pacific/Atlantic/Indian Ocean or does each gov't tend to issue a world map of weather instead of just local?

Ds I'll take a look at both those options. Have plenty of room, but since now just the mentioning of "ham" has scared me off. Will have to do some research!