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Old 01-12-2011, 18:11   #76
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Re: Let the Hams in ?

G'day, Goboatingnow. Check the thread, the "Marine radio is a life safety service. Ham radio is not." quote is not mine. Cheers.
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Old 01-12-2011, 18:52   #77
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Quote:
Originally Posted by matauwhi
G'day, Goboatingnow. Check the thread, the "Marine radio is a life safety service. Ham radio is not." quote is not mine. Cheers.
The OP to this thread was not talking about emergency access to marine HF bands he was arguing that for normal use ham should be allowed access to marine HF bands

Marine HF as it is part of the GMDSS is by definition an official life safety service. Amateur radio is not.

I commented on your comment because nobody is arguing with you in an emergency situation all bands are available so why mention it ( ands it's been mentioned repeatedly )

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Old 02-12-2011, 02:06   #78
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Re: Let the Hams in ?

I've spent a lot of time listening to traffic on marine channels. So far, I have NEVER heard any emergency traffic there. I have, however, heard some on the ham bands.

Point is, to define the marine channels as a safety service flies in the face of actual practice. Of course, it has been so used, and will be in the future, but emergency traffic makes up a tiny fraction of transmissions.

And finally, I'm still not convinced that use of a modern and properly operated ham rig on marine frequencies (from a vessel at sea, not in harbour) will materially interfere with others usage of these frequencies.

Anyhow, I for one don't want to cause interference nor to attract fines or such from the authorities, and I have been educated bu some of the data provided above... thanks for the discussion.

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Old 02-12-2011, 09:33   #79
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Re: Let the Hams in ?

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Originally Posted by matauwhi View Post
G'day again, Auspicious. It is perfectly legal, in a distress situation for any one, licensed or not, to use a ham radio on any frequency in an attempt to obtain assistance. And likewise, a marine SSB can be used on the ham bands.
For the former of course. For the latter, one may use any radio on the ham bands within the limits of your license.

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Personally for the money, I consider my ICOM 706MKIIG one of the key safety related items on our boat and would recommend anyone heading offshore to seriously consider acquiring one.
And for emergency use I would agree. I differ from you (I think) that the use of 706MkIIG is appropriate on the marine bands in a non-emergency situation. Just to be clear, getting weather is not an emergency even if it is life safety. If you don't like the rules work to change them, don't flout them.

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I've spent a lot of time listening to traffic on marine channels. So far, I have NEVER heard any emergency traffic there. I have, however, heard some on the ham bands.
True enough and one of the more interesting artifacts of the way the world works. I have much much better experience with the maritime nets on the ham bands than on the marine bands. Phone patches, custom weather data, e-mail -- all are outstanding on the ham bands. You just have to get a license.

The Waterway Radio Net kept me in touch with a family medical crisis while I was offshore on a delivery last year. I'll never forget the care and consideration I got from the net during that time.

Still, it wasn't an emergency.

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And finally, I'm still not convinced that use of a modern and properly operated ham rig on marine frequencies (from a vessel at sea, not in harbour) will materially interfere with others usage of these frequencies.
Come meet me aboard in Elizabeth Harbor, Sea of Abaco, or nearly any big cruising ground down island during the morning "e-mail time" and you'll see differently.

At sea perhaps not so much, but do you care so little about your fellow seafarers as to risk their lives if they ARE trying to communicate a safety-of-life at sea issue within 20 or 50 miles of you?

The rules aren't so onerous and the costs of compliance aren't so great.

73 es sail fast, dave KO4MI
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Old 02-12-2011, 10:14   #80
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Re: Let the Hams in ?

G'day, Auspicious. I'm not flouting any rules mate and haven't done so in any of my posts. Use a little critical thinking, a captain and crew on a cruising boat can learn alot of key information that might keep them out of a distress situation by simply LISTENING. That little ICOMMKIIG rig allows one to do a lot of listening, on a lot of frequencies, for a fraction of the cost. Each captain sets their own risk levels and corresponding decides which gear to put on the boat.

As far as bureaucracy goes, one has to simply ask themselves why the FCC did not order ICOM to recall their early M802 models. It had a known defect that was putting mariners at risk if they have certified it as a so called "life safety device".

Time for a cuppa. Try to have a good day. Cheers

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Old 02-12-2011, 10:29   #81
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Re: Let the Hams in ?

I dont know, I defy any listener to tell the difference between a Ham radio properly tuned to send and receive duplex ssb frequencies and a Marine SSB unit. Especially with the quality of most vox tx's. JMHO
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Old 02-12-2011, 10:33   #82
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Re: Let the Hams in ?

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Come meet me aboard in Elizabeth Harbor, Sea of Abaco, or nearly any big cruising ground down island during the morning "e-mail time" and you'll see differently.

73 es sail fast, dave KO4MI

Why do you think the interference from 'email time' is coming from ham radios and not from marine radios?? I'm just wondering, but it would seem that there are several factors involved:

1. Winlink frequencies are different than the Sailmail frequencies, meaning that adjacent channel interference might be more likely from the hams if you are on a ham voice net, and more likely from the marine radios if you are on an SSB net.

2. The better spectral purity of the marine radios may be offset by their higher power. I regularly run my Winlink connections at about 25 watts, because that's all it takes, and the user interface makes it a lot easier to turn the power down on my ham rig than on my marine SSB.

3. I might be wrong, but I think its possible to overmodulate both radios with the Pactor modem if you don't follow instructions.

I agree that the big anchorages can have issues with 'email time', but I can't say for sure which radios are causing it. I can cut the front end amplification of my ham receiver back to reduce the problem, but can't do than with my SSB.
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Old 02-12-2011, 11:49   #83
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Re: Let the Hams in ?

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Originally Posted by Auspicious View Post
Come meet me aboard in Elizabeth Harbor, Sea of Abaco, or nearly any big cruising ground down island during the morning "e-mail time" and you'll see differently.

At sea perhaps not so much, but do you care so little about your fellow seafarers as to risk their lives if they ARE trying to communicate a safety-of-life at sea issue within 20 or 50 miles of you?

The rules aren't so onerous and the costs of compliance aren't so great.

73 es sail fast, dave KO4MI
G'Day Dave,

I don't doubt that there is interference between boats in Elizabeth Harbour during e-mail time... similar things happen here in the South Pacific. However, I'm still unsure that this interference is due to the use of ham rigs on the marine frequencies. I've noticed that folks with 802's (in particular) and other typical marine radios usually leave them set on high power (150 watts) for doing Sailmail (and everything else as well), where I normally operate my ham rig at circa 20 watts for Winlink contacts. In such cases, the Marine rig is far more likely to cause interference to other nearby vessels. The interference may be due to spurious sidebands, poor frequency stability (though unlikely) or simple overloading of the front end of nearby receivers. The latter is IMO far more likely, and is an artifact of receiver performance rather than the transmitter's specifications. Further, I think that in realistic terms, the ham rig's looser standards have little chance of risking the lives of fellow seafarers at a distance of 20-50 miles.

I am not advocating flaunting the rules, but I do challenge the idea that use of ham rigs actually causes significant interference on the marine frequencies. So far, all I have heard here is that "it happens all the time".

I spend very little time listening on the marine frequencies so that my personal experience there is limited. I stand ready to hear others real life evidence... but lets try to separate out the overload interference from cases where it is really the poorer specifications of the ham rig that are at fault.

73 de Jim N9GFT/VK4GFT
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Old 03-12-2011, 04:19   #84
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Re: Let the Hams in ?

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Originally Posted by matauwhi View Post
G'day, Auspicious. I'm not flouting any rules mate and haven't done so in any of my posts. Use a little critical thinking, a captain and crew on a cruising boat can learn alot of key information that might keep them out of a distress situation by simply LISTENING. That little ICOMMKIIG rig allows one to do a lot of listening, on a lot of frequencies, for a fraction of the cost.
I went back and read all your posts. You certainly didn't start out talking about receiving. Of course one can listen to any frequency one likes on any radio with the capability.

What this thread is about is a change in regulations to allow the use of ham radio equipment to transmit out-of-band on marine frequencies. I interpret your earlier posts as supporting that proposition. I differ.

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Why do you think the interference from 'email time' is coming from ham radios and not from marine radios?? I'm just wondering, but it would seem that there are several factors involved.
Because people talk in anchorages and you discover who has what radios and use them on which services, the VHF "party line" ends up including tidbits about who is on the air at any given time and that can be correlated to interference.

Your points on power level are well taken. Ham radios on marine frequencies seem to be the biggest sources of interference. The Kenwood TS-50 is one of the worst. The 706MkIIG has its issues as well.

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I spend very little time listening on the marine frequencies so that my personal experience there is limited. I stand ready to hear others real life evidence... but lets try to separate out the overload interference from cases where it is really the poorer specifications of the ham rig that are at fault.
Fair enough. I don't carry a spectrum analyzer or service monitor on the boat. I have to work from what I can discern.

For nets I agree with Jim that the ham-band marine nets beat the heck out of the marine-band nets. I am a regular user of ShipCom on the marine bands so I spend enough time on those frequencies to notice interference.

With regard to the 20-50 mile number I threw out earlier, my thinking is that interference doesn't have to blanket a signal to be an issue. Even a bit of garble can slow down important or emergency communications.
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Old 04-12-2011, 12:33   #85
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Re: Let the Hams in ?

How does the Icom 802 do when it is being operated on ham bands? Does it cause all the problems that everyone talks about when using a ham radio?
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Old 04-12-2011, 12:59   #86
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Re: Let the Hams in ?

The M802 is built to stricter standards than most ham radios, as noted before. With modern technology there shouldn't be any performance difference just because of a small frequency difference between the ham and marine bands. So the M802 should work "better" than most ham rigs on the ham bands as well. That said, I don't know many folks who carry equipment that can detect those differences, and as a practical matter either will work just fine. The disadvantage of the M802 is that it lacks convenient manual controls. The marine bands are strictly channelized, so it is a simple matter to call up the appropriate channel. Making contact on the ham bands often involves looking around on the band and squeezing in to an open frequency - something that is awkward to do on the M802 and many other marine radios.
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Old 04-12-2011, 13:09   #87
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Re: Let the Hams in ?

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How does the Icom 802 do when it is being operated on ham bands? Does it cause all the problems that everyone talks about when using a ham radio?
If we're gonna compare the 802 with other radios for use on HAM bands, then I would rather have an ancient Kenwood ts-50 with manual tuner !!

I have an Icom 710-RT marine SSB and a Kenwood ts-480 HAM radio and the Kenwood is 100 times the radio... and the 710 is imho way better than the 802, so that about sums up my feelings about the 802.

Now that I'm writing here anyway, I can add that I have doubts on interference from HAM radio's operating Pactor modems. In fact, I'm sure that I have had heaps of interference from marine SSB's with pactor modems and I believe that there's no difference in interference from HAM and SSB radios doing their Pactor email. When you are close together like in a busy anchorage, any high power SSB/HAM operation leads to problems on other boats.
The thing is: just do not transmit when the local and/or major nets are operating (other than on those nets of course). This is simple radio etiquette.

If you have Pactor interference from another boat, you can find out by using your Airmail program and monitor & decode that transmission. You can see what they do and who it is.

cheers,
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Old 04-12-2011, 14:34   #88
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Re: Let the Hams in ?

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Making contact on the ham bands often involves looking around on the band and squeezing in to an open frequency - something that is awkward to do on the M802 and many other marine radios.
I find the 802 works very well for looking around the bands for ham operation. Once in VFO mode, it's very simple to change bands and search around a particular band. The two main control knobs work similar to switches but the "detents" are "light" so the knobs rotate rather smoothly compared to most other marine rigs. While you can only change in 100hz steps, you can rotate that knob quickly with one finger.

Eric
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Old 05-12-2011, 11:05   #89
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It is easy to incorrectly set Pactor modem drive levels such that the transmitter clips peaks and causes distortion and band splatter. The proper drive level will give an average power output of about half of the power the transmitter is "set" to deliver. An uninformed radio operator might see this relatively "low" average output and increase the drive level ( an Airmail setting) causing both splatter and poorer Pactor throughput. I do believe even an M802 will cause problems this way, and Ill bet that is the source of much interference in crowded anchorages. Just turning down the transmitter's "power" setting won't cure this problem, one must reduce drive levels going into the transmitter from the modem. Just thought this would br a good place to raise the point.

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Old 07-12-2011, 08:35   #90
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Re: Let the Hams in ?

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It is easy to incorrectly set Pactor modem drive levels such that the transmitter clips peaks and causes distortion and band splatter. The proper drive level will give an average power output of about half of the power the transmitter is "set" to deliver. An uninformed radio operator might see this relatively "low" average output and increase the drive level ( an Airmail setting) causing both splatter and poorer Pactor throughput. I do believe even an M802 will cause problems this way, and Ill bet that is the source of much interference in crowded anchorages. Just turning down the transmitter's "power" setting won't cure this problem, one must reduce drive levels going into the transmitter from the modem. Just thought this would br a good place to raise the point.
Chip makes an excellent point. The good news is that the sorts of people who can't follow the simple directions to set the drive level are likely to give up in frustration and get a sat phone. We all win, as the Pactor modem then shows up on the used market.
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