I bought a Vesper Cortex while it was still an independent company. I had some issues, mostly with
installation and my ineptitude, but they worked with me through them promptly and I was more than happy when I got my first
AIS reports on
OpenCPN from more than 30 miles away.
As an aside, I used to leave the unit on while the boat was unattended on a swing
mooring for monitoring purposes which is another benefit of the Cortex system. At around 2 O'clock in the morning I got a call from the local police asking me details of my boat, where the
emergency was, what vessel was in trouble, how many people were involved and who it was that was needing help. In my stupor I couldn't make sense of it until the
fog cleared and I realized my Cortex had received a digital
distress call and relayed it through the VHF. This activated the
remote speaker hooked up to my
steering pedestal and thus several hundred yards away people heard details of a
distress call issuing from my little speaker with the volume up because of the normal need to hear it over the
engine. It was later established as a false
alarm, but as a matter of interest I copied down the co-ordinates of the distressed vessel and traced it to a landlocked boat which after driving around revealed a boat that hadn't seen the
water for some time. Something triggered it to send that call out, probable a VHF with
DSC.
You have to laugh, but it does show the system works. Though it may be inconvenient at times.