Quote:
Originally Posted by wedivebc
My radio can switch channels from the mike button but if I have to switch to US mode (which CG seems to insist on) I have to go below and change a setting on my radio. Does US mode have greater range or is there something else I'm missing?
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You raise a messy topic, wedivebc. Messy, because the
history has not been well documented and so it's very hard to discuss accurately.
One way (not the only way and not guaranteed to 100% accurate) of looking at the situation is:
* in around 1947, by agreement at an international conference held in
New Jersey, three chunks of the
VHF spectrum were allocated to maritime mobile use for
safety. But the bottom line always was that individual jurisdictions (i.e. nation states) had to exert their political will to safeguard the spectrum allocation for maritime mobile.
* in the US, in 1948 the USCG did deals with the US FCC, surrendering some spectrum and getting the 21A thru 24A channels in return.
* in other jurisdictions (i.e. outside the US), different nation-states did slightly different things, but generally three chunks of VHF spectrum were allocated to maritime mobile. In truth, VHF 16 is the minimum that is protected around the world. Some jurisdictions don't like their citizens having access to VHF transceivers at all. Not mentioning any names now.
* in the US, the several railway companies were politically much more powerful than the unorganised users of maritime mobile. So the US ended up with only two of those three chunks of VHF spectrum allocated to maritime mobile. And one of the two chunks was made thinner than elsewhere. Railways and other
commercial uses took what in non-US jurisdictions is maritime mobile spectrum.
* back in the 1980s, there was a
marine incident. A foreign flagged ship was navigating in US waters. The USCG had broadcast a warning (on 21A or one of those other USA-only channels) that a barge carrying flammable petrochemicals (petrol or gasoline, depending what side of the creek you went to school) was adrift. The foreign flagged ship was, not surprisingly, not monitoring the US channels and so received not that warning broadcast. The
captain of the foreign flagged ship was not happy. The eventual result was that the US Houses of Congress legislated that all foreign-flagged ships in US waters must carry a VHF transceiver with a switch that changed from "international mode" to the more restricted (but with the 21A - 24A channels that the USCG had bartered from the US FCC) "US mode". Although not governed by US law, most all of this planet's manufacturers of VHF sets have installed that switch. No one specified that that switch should be easy to use - quite the contrary.
* as I understand it, you're in a jurisdiction that neighbours the US. So you're what everyone calls 'SOL'. You ain't got much choice.
* a side benefit (which we're not allowed to talk about, so please close your eyes now) is that one or two of those channels that the USCG bartered from the US FCC, the 21A to 24A spread, is not much used outside the US. So if you want to have a conversation with another cruiser in, say, (insert the name of a non-N American or Central American country), you can look at the frequency list, identify which of those -A channels is not used "iinternationally" and agree to use it. You can open your eyes now. (of course, in at least one "international" jurisdiction, if that -A channel is overused, the local radio police do their best to track down the mis-users of it. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. 'Nuff said.)