FYI to all from the OP... You might remember all my
gear got knocked out by a
lightning hit. Here's what I ended up getting: a
Raymarine AIS700 (combined
AIS transponder and antenna mux), and a simple Standard Horizon GX1850 - a very simple mounted vhf. About half the cost of a Cortex (w handset).
Why? I looked hard at the Cortex at the
boat show">Annapolis Boat Show. Fairly nice, but way too complicated for what I do with a VHF - which is as little as possible. I don't make
DSC calls to the bridges of other ships, etc, etc, and I don't need more alarms. The GX1850 just plugged right into the N2K/SeaTalkNG so I have DCS features w Lat/Long if I need them (like the SOS, etc). My new Ray Axiom chart plotter makes it easy to see all the nearby AIS targets and get the MMSI - so I can call them if I need to with a
DSC call - but ships in traffic are usually listening if you call them by name. If not, would a DCS call make any difference? Probably not. In the end AIS is quite valuable, but VHF is really not worth a lot of
money to me and I just need it to be simple and reliable. Since I saved some
money, I bought two VHFs - one for the
helm w masthead antenna, and another at the nav station near the AIS unit, using another antenna on the stern arch. Redundancy won out. Thanks for all your opinions. Cheers and Fair Winds