Boating technology in the 1960s

[snowleopard]

In the 60s and 70s, while radios were available, they were pretty expensive and lots of boats didn't have them, including mine. VHF sets needed specific crystals for every channel they wanted to use so you would hear "switch to channel 77"..."Sorry, don't have that crystal".

When I set off on the 1976 OSTAR the only radio I had on board was a LW/MW/SW receiver. I did have an EPIRB as required by the rules - a hired 121.5/243 transmitter 3 ft long and 5" diameter.

Alain Colas had a satnav on Club Med the 240 ft monster but it was deemed an unfair advantage so we all received letters telling us we couldn't use satnav - not a big deal to me as a set cost more than my boat.

 

[JumbleDuck]

As for 16 while they still listen I believe the ability to make a ship to shore phone call was eliminated around the same time

I think the BT Coastal Radio Station network, which handled link calls, closed in 2000. I took having a break from sailing from about 1996 to about 2003, and when I came back they had gone.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Alain Colas had a satnav on Club Med the 240 ft monster but it was deemed an unfair advantage so we all received letters telling us we couldn't use satnav - not a big deal to me as a set cost more than my boat.

My first thought was "Satnav? In 1976?" But then I checked and yes, he could have used the American Transit system. Coo, one learns something new every day.

http://mmncny.org/collections/satelite-navagator/

 

[AntarcticPilot]

In the 60s and 70s, while radios were available, they were pretty expensive and lots of boats didn't have them, including mine. VHF sets needed specific crystals for every channel they wanted to use so you would hear "switch to channel 77"..."Sorry, don't have that crystal".

When I set off on the 1976 OSTAR the only radio I had on board was a LW/MW/SW receiver. I did have an EPIRB as required by the rules - a hired 121.5/243 transmitter 3 ft long and 5" diameter.

Alain Colas had a satnav on Club Med the 240 ft monster but it was deemed an unfair advantage so we all received letters telling us we couldn't use satnav - not a big deal to me as a set cost more than my boat.

It's worth remembering that while transistors were commonplace, they were still pretty expensive. I had one of the Phillips electronics experimenter sets when I was in my mid teens (mid 60s), and it contained two transistors - and if the leads broke off one, it cost 10/6 to replace it - a substantial amount of money in the days when a week's shopping might cost less than £5. Most "trannies" had two transistors, and power transistors, such as they were, were incredibly expensive. It wasn't until the advent of integrated circuits that the complexity and capability of electronics really rocketed - and that didn't happen until the 1980s. Modern chip counts of millions of devices were simply unthinkable back then!

Further, silicon was very new technology in those days, and most transistors were much simpler types than thos we have today; germanium was still prevalent. The unfortunate thing about germanium transistors is that they have a limited life-span, so equipment made with them is unlikely to be still operational.

My first thought was "Satnav? In 1976?" But then I checked and yes, he could have used the American Transit system. Coo, one learns something new every day.

http://mmncny.org/collections/satelite-navagator/

In 1975 I was on a survey vessel in the North Sea, and one of the wonders was a sat nav (Transit) system that got our position (intermittently) to about 50m. Between times the system we were using used log and compass inputs to estimate position, and every now and again you could see a sudden jump as the latest sat nav position came in - about every 15-20 minutes, I think. The equipment was a massive Motorola box, about the size of a filing cabinet, and when it crashed, as it did fairly regularly, it needs a long hexadecimal sequence to be keyed in on the front panel to restart it!

In 1982 I got a free trip in company time to the London Boat Show to get a good deal on a satellite navigator for use on a field trip to Svalbard (we produced the first decent map of NordAustLandet in the Svalbard Archipelago, including ice thickness measurements). The kit then was about the size of a shoe box, and had a simple display of two LED 7 segment numerical displays that showed latitude and longitude. It could take a long time to get a fix; you had to wait for satellites to come over. Accuracy wasn't bad - it could JUST distinguish two corners of the roof of the Scott Polar research Institute in Cambridge, if you left it for long enough to get a good fix in each location, so I suppose it was good to 10-20m. Location accuracy got better with time, as it was able to average successive positions; in fact that was a feature I looked for on the kit we bought! The kit was quite definitely NOT hardy; we had to build it an insulated box to contain both it and a gel-cell to power it. And the position wan't "real-time" - it wasn't something you would consult at the helm, even if it had a suitable display.

However, the accuracy of a single fix was about 50m, amazing by 1970s and 80s standards, but much worse than we are all used to! And when used in averaging mode, it was good enough for me to encounter the problem of geodetic datums for the first time; the positions of our building corners didn't agree with the OS positions that we laboriously extracted from 6" to the mile maps. Of course, Transit operated on WGS72 (predecessor of WGS84!) and that didn't agree with OS1936!

 

[JumbleDuck]

Further, silicon was very new technology in those days, and most transistors were much simpler types than thos we have today; germanium was still prevalent. The unfortunate thing about germanium transistors is that they have a limited life-span, so equipment made with them is unlikely to be still operational.

Just to add to the pain, nobody makes germanium transistors any more - they go for a fortune on eBay. Even some of the standard silicon ones are getting harder to find - I have just stocked up on BC108s and BC109s