Does anyone use an SSB in Europe?

[Seven Spades]

I have an SSB on board and never hear any traffic on it all I can pick up are radio stations.

 

[GHA]

Not common around Europe, used to be a ham net advertised at , iirc, 08:00 on 14.3MHZ.

You might pick up an atlantic net if the propagation is good, like SSCA >

SSCA TRANSATLANTIC CRUISERS NET WILL RESUME OPERATION 04 MAY 2020
Commencing 04 May at 2100 hrs. UTC or 1700 hrs. Eastern Time, four U.S. based FCC Coastal Maritime Stations will resume operation of the SSCA Trans-Atlantic Cruisers Net.
As last year, which we found to work out very well, we start the net in concert with the long-standing Doo Dah Net, hosted by Dick Giddings, call sign KNC, on SSB frequency 8.152. The net will transition to frequency 12.350 after about 10-15 minutes to accommodate vessels further at sea or depending on propagation.

 

[MapisM]

I have an SSB on board and never hear any traffic on it all I can pick up are radio stations.

I used to have a perfectly working Furuno SSB transceiver on my previous boat, but I only tried it a few times, out of idle curiosity.
I picked up a couple of communications or three, between vessels crossing the Atlantic and/or between them and some land stations.
Always at nighttime, btw.
Totally useless bit of kit in the Med, but it did look professional on the dashboard!

 

[jdc]

I have an ICOM 801E but to be honest it's been useful only on a handful of occasions when in the arctic, and that only once a shore-based contact was already set up before departure. At no time have I ever used it to communicate between yachts without a prior arrangement and never heard one of the cruiser nets. In fact marine frequencies are pretty much silent nowadays. The amateur bands at 7 and 14 MHz are active, but mostly with operators doing 'DX contests' - which is about the most tedious activity on the planet - and the radio procedures and etiquette of many amateurs is so cringe-makingly dreadful that you are unlikely to be a able to communicate in any useful manner. It's always whoever shouts loudest, who gets through, and a yacht set with back-stay antenna will never be anything but relatively weak when compared with land stations with big PAs. So you can be having a conversation with an amateur and some other station then plonks right on top and blasts away with a 1kW PA without first bothering to establish that the frequency is clear (some nationalities seem more prone to doing this than others, but I don't want to generalise here).

Sometimes receiving forecasts could be useful, but the broadcast schedules are so limited that it's hardly worthwhile in my opinion. The coast radio stations use such low frequencies (<2MHz) that the range is only a few hundred miles, and the various national 'word-services' don't bother with marine forecasts anymore anyway. One can get the synoptic chart from Northwood and the VOLMET actuals, but I've found it so much more reliable to use an email repeater service such as mailasail over Iridium to get weather and GRIBs.

 

[Daverw]

until you add maritime mobile to your call sign then they all want you, last year sat on board with SSB Ham set and was busy for 6 hours with many actual chats rather than signal reports. But agree no real sailing use in europe

 

[nortada]

Sold our SSB on - old hat

 

[Yngmar]

We have two handheld SSB receivers onboard, no transmitter. I played with them on dull passages occasionally, but never got anything of interest. Sometimes you pick up amateur radio enthusiasts chatting away, even without a big antenna, but nothing relevant to sailing.

We've used them for weatherfax reception, but most of the time you set off with a stable forecast and the passage isn't long enough to need another one before you arrive (or the forecast was so utterly useless that the weatherfax didn't reflect it even after you've arrived - that's the Med I guess). In port or even anchored near land this doesn't work well at all due to too much interference - at sea it's much better though.

For transatlantic I'd get a YB3 tracker with 1-2 month subscription and someone on shore to send me text messages with weather routing advice. All of that costs a lot less than a full SSB (transmitter) installation. But hey, the receivers can also tune into local FM radio stations, which is sometimes fun (except in Vilamoura)

 

[t21]

nope, dead as a doornail

 

[blenkinsop]

Although there appears to be little inter boat communication on in Europe on SSB, it can still have role in emailing via Sailmail and getting forecasts, Gribfiles etc via the linked Saildocs

 

[GHA]

Anyone know any ad hoc or organised net frequencies/times for trans at boats coming back across at the moment?

Then we can have a listen on websdr.org