DSC, its time to make the MCA listen

[tome]

Are you serious? Dismantle the set and defeat the design because the specification is plain wrong?

Even though I could do this, are you suggesting that this is the answer when buying a DSC set? It seems a bit unfair on the average yachtsman who might struggle with the innards of a VHF set.

 

[fireball]

..... and break your warranty ... good one!
Why pay a few hundred and then have to fix it before you can use it?!

Volume and clarity of VHF is important - to be at the right level at the right time.... if your in the middle of a gale, bashing to windward then your going to need the volume up a bit to be able to hear it.
If your on a run on a loverly sunny day with a gentle, sampling some grape juice then you don't want the equivalent of a heavy metal band tuning up and doing sound checks!
It really wouldn't've taken much to do the same as car radios do with travel programs and allow you to set the volume...
As for internal speaker cutoff - two sockets for external speakers should be employed on the back - one that cuts off the internal and one that doesnt. then you can choose - all for the added manufacturing cost of <50p.

 

[tome]

nm

 

[AndrewB]

[ QUOTE ]
It seems you are suggesting you are not capable of undoing a few screws, locating the speaker wires and either rewiring such that the external speaker jack disconnects the internal speaker or taking a speaker wire to the outside world so you can put a switch in a circuit.

[/ QUOTE ]If you can stick a switch in your loudspeaker circuit, surely putting in a volume control (rheostat) is no more difficult. This solves the original problem - but is it legal?

My answer to this mess is not to buy a DSC set until its sorted out, make do with what I've got. The response of a great many in my marina. It's done a power of good for the local electronics Mr Fixit, and lost a pile of business from the chandlers and the likes of ICOM. You'd think the manufacturors would see it hitting their sales, they probably have a lot more clout than a bunch of us Joe Punters who no-one cares about as long as we keep putting up our dosh.

 

[Robin]

Putting in a volume control on the loudspeaker doesn't help! The set's volume control will vary the loudspeaker volume just as it always did, but the ALARM volume is fixed and non adjustable. I guess it is the same as the traffic info from your car radio whereyou can adjust the traffic ino volume separately from the music/speech volume, just that in the case of a DSC VHF the equivalent of the traffic info volume is FIXED by a committee at a level to waken the dead or even Jimi after a heavy night!