Ham radio operator

[zoidberg]

Am exploring the pathways to 'Long Range Certificate' and/or 'Amateur Radio ( Foundation/Intermediate/Full ) License' and puzzling over which path to follow. Peeps here will have explored this before me.....

Thoughts? Warnings? Preferences?

 

[elton]

Am exploring the pathways to 'Long Range Certificate' and/or 'Amateur Radio ( Foundation/Intermediate/Full ) License' and puzzling over which path to follow. Peeps here will have explored this before me.....

Thoughts? Warnings? Preferences?

I joined a local amateur radio club with the intention of getting the ham licence, but after three meetings I realised the hobby was so boring, I couldn't stand it. The sole objective of the ham seems to be to contact other distant hams by radio, and exchange details that prove the contact. But I'd already bought myself the UV5R radio, which is good for the Short Range Marine band, the ham bands and PMR, so all was not lost.

 

[HunterWanderer]

I went the am radio route. Joined the local club and did the exams which were not too challenging.
The am radio is basically free to use as the licence is for life.
Am Radios are relatively cheap and often can be modified to transmit on the marine bands as well if you want .
I've also got a modem connected between the radio and laptop which allows me to send and receive emails, position reports and grib files free over the radio using winlink 2000 .

 

[lw395]

I joined a local amateur radio club with the intention of getting the ham licence, but after three meetings I realised the hobby was so boring, I couldn't stand it. The sole objective of the ham seems to be to contact other distant hams by radio, and exchange details that prove the contact. But I'd already bought myself the UV5R radio, which is good for the Short Range Marine band, the ham bands and PMR, so all was not lost.

Hams are one of those things you have to put up with, working in any radio industry.
These days they normally email each other to arrange to send each other a bit of morse.
If you tell them you'll be mid ocean and actually out of touch from phone networks, you may have to beat them off with a stick.

 

[Ohlin Karcher]

Hi Zoidberg, I have reached the Intermediate level and found it easy, the Advanced is quite a lot more involved with maths and theory. One of the Intermediate exam questions is about how to wire a plug, and the previous bunch of students who passed it were 8 yrs old..
There's a bit of practical, eg solder a coax, build a simple project (one step up from a crystal set really) and a slow Morse practical ( I imagine your Morse skills are already ' good enough for government work'..) and everything is explained.
It seems the only way to do it is to join a local club and do the classes and exam with them, and it's all lovely and cheap compared to RYA branded courses!
I have found it quite useful for sailing, eg my VHF aerial broke and I had a home-made coathanger one hoisted up the flag halliard in half an hour tested and working, it still works as well as the £90 Metz from Salty Johns it replaced..
As a hobby in itself, I have never got into it, the technical aspect is slightly interesting, but what do you chat about?
I assume you have seen the Tony Hancock skit, if not, do!
For blue water SSB, ( or even Solent SSB from a transmitter afloat) you *theoretically* need an Advanced licence to legally operate 'Maritime Mobile'.
I don't have my books to hand, plenty on ebay I imagine. It is all administered by the RSGB, who will tell you about the plethora of rules and regulations involved ( states, countries and nations love to keep a very tight grip on radio transmissions, however liberal the regime).
The LRC is extortionately expensive and much will be irrelevant ( sat coms) but it does teach you about DSC HF radio proceedures. One big difference between ham and marine sets, DSC or not, is that marine ones are channelised like the VHF on the boat, but ham sets need knobs twiddling and never have DSC of course.
If it's for blue water, the Caribbean and the States are reputedly free and easy about enforcing the legalities, and Ofcom seem unlikely to carry out a dawn raid on your yacht for a technical infringement..( illegal pirate radio stations are thriving in the UK's cities, blasting out reggae and bangla at high wattage, all weekend on the VHF broadcast bands with little opposition).
I would give the LRC serious thought, if you can afford it or do it through the back door. But most of it can be learned from books, websites and the grapevine, it is not enforced, and a ham ticket will give you the grass roots of it.
There is a sensible Facebook group you could join, it's very educational compared to most of Facebook..'Offshore SSB Radio and Email'.

 

[duncan99210]

Minor point but there’s no longer a requirement to learn morse code for the ham radio exams.

 

[zoidberg]

Hi Zoidberg, I have reached the Intermediate level and found it easy,.... There is a sensible Facebook group you could join, it's very educational compared to most of Facebook..'Offshore SSB Radio and Email'.

Thanks for all that. Hoisted in....

And, it's a fair while since I last heard 'Close enough for government work'....


Edit: There's a local club just a few miles away, who plan to run a course 'soon'. I reckon I'll sign up for that, for the beer in the village social club bar upstairs is quite cheap......

I did the mandatory '12 words a minute' exam close on 50 years ago - just one of the scores of tests - hurdles to jump - along the road to being permitted to fly in HM Queen's airyplanes.
Today, with a half-hours practice, I could certainly manage 6 w.p.m.

 

[Roberto]

Amateur radio at sea has recently (say past 10-15years) made some significant advancements as to make appear some of the comments coming from another century.
It's not much "talking to other hams about weather", among other things the amateur licence gives you access to the Winlink system (just google to see what it is).
With the latest developments (esp Ardop and Vara), an amateur licence and a few hundred quids radio system gives you acces to basically free email, with transfer speeds hovering around those of satellite phone (some a bit higher, some a bit lower), way above what is needed at sea for normal sailing (i.e. if you are not a rtw racer).
You can query/retrieve gribs, bulletins, charts etc of all kinds, send your positions to the Winlink reporting system, all free. One cannot make communications for commercial purposes under the licence terms.

After a few transatlantics, I consider the amateur radio by all means the very best "ticket" one can get for offshore sailing purposes.
Understandably, satellite phone service providers have a different opinion.

 

[Ohlin Karcher]

Very interesting Roberto.

 

[weustace]

Hams are one of those things you have to put up with, working in any radio industry.
These days they normally email each other to arrange to send each other a bit of morse.
If you tell them you'll be mid ocean and actually out of touch from phone networks, you may have to beat them off with a stick.

Oh dear, I'm very sorry we're such a nuisance to you. What did we do to bother you?

Regarding the OP's question: legally there is a clear distinction in that the LRC permits operation on the maritime HF bands, the amateur licence does not. Amateur radio rigs will not be equipped with DSC for HF, which is potentially quite useful for alerting other ship stations to your distress situation when offshore; most amateur rigs can be modified to cover the marine HF bands, but they are not licensed for this operation. By contrast, a marine HF rig will (I'm told) operate happily on the amateur bands, which is fine so long as you hold a valid amateur licence (because amateurs are supposed to be at least somewhat competent—perhaps unlike those lw395 has worked with—they are allowed to build/modify equipment for the amateur bands).

Amateur radio also comes with the rest of the hobby attached; others have made their pronouncement on that, clearly, but some of us find it quite entertaining!

Regards
William

 

[Ohlin Karcher]

weustace, I have been wrong these few years.. I (and other yachts I know of) mistakenly thought that an Advanced ham licence permitted operation, (with a ham set), on Marine bands, if the ham radio set itself can manage to hold the narrow frequency band of a particular marine channel, without spreading to adjacent channels or other issues.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" I am merely 2E0 JCJ

 

[elton]

Am Radios are relatively cheap and often can be modified to transmit on the marine bands as well if you want .

How can an AM radio be modified to work on the marine short range band, which is FM?

 

[Daverw]

My Ham HF radios will operate if I wanted to on the marine bands easily but I don’t as they are out of my licence bands as a full Ham operator. I don’t think however if I was at sea anyone would bother if I did and how would they actually know. I do operate from my boat on Ham bands as many other ham operators are very keen to speak to different locations and not always just a boring exchange. The thing to remember is that our licence condition actually seriously restrict the type of conversation to technical exchanges, it’s not like CB radio. The Ham gear is far more technical than the standard marine HF with many more operating modes available and can operate with far more power

 

[Seajet]

I can understand the appeal of Ham for chats esp for lonely singlehanders etc but has sat phone eaten into the useful weather routing info ?

I know sat is pricey but presumably one can tether a laptop and get info on ports and weather etc - if singlehanding transat I'd be worried about missing a chat if busy in case posted as in bother - but maybe that's a good thing ?

 

[maby]

How can an AM radio be modified to work on the marine short range band, which is FM?

I think you'll find that he's using "am" as an abbreviation for "amateur", not "Amplitude Modulated". The vast majority of radios produced for the amateur market can be modified to transmit on all frequencies within their range rather than being limited to the official amateur bands. All the radios I have on the boat have been "wide-banded" - I would not normally use them to call the coastguard but, if the boat's installed radio or antenna failed, I would have no hesitation in calling on one of my 2m rigs if I needed help.....

As far as the original subject is concerned, I would say that amateur radio and marine long range SSB are complimentary. There's a lot of radio amateurs in the world and a boat in trouble equipped with an amateur radio transmitter should have no difficulty getting an SOS message noticed, but the person responding will not have been trained in how to help and it may take quite a long time before the message gets to the appropriate authorities. Similarly, most of the people you can talk to will not have sailing knowledge - you will probably have no great difficulty getting a weather report for Addis Ababa but few amateurs are going to know what conditions are in the middle of the Atlantic.

 

[Skylark]

A very interesting and informative thread (apart from one but that’s to be expected as he has form), especially Roberto, many thanks. A few things well worth checking out.

I’ve held an A license for many years and have accumulated quite a bit of HF kit along the way.

I tend to agree with Maby in that Amateur and LRC/Marine are complimentary. I’d like to do the LRC but it’s eye wateringly expensive and seemingly only available on the south coast.

 

[KellysEye]

If you are intending to use thr SSB on a yachtr then you need marine licence.

 

[GHA]

Am exploring the pathways to 'Long Range Certificate' and/or 'Amateur Radio ( Foundation/Intermediate/Full ) License' and puzzling over which path to follow. Peeps here will have explored this before me.....

Thoughts? Warnings? Preferences?

I went the ham route after getting fed up paying for a Sat phone sim card unused most of the time.

Probably pretty pointless on a boat unless you're heading off around the world. Not much on the airwaves round Europe though you'll have an excellent weatherfax receiver


Much cheaper than the marine SSB route, both for license & kit. Plus you'll learn much more. US boats caan get a marine ssb license free online so you'll probably be fine on marine SSB with just a ham license though if you don't know what you're doing (which you will of course, having an advanced ham license ) you can make a mess on the frequencies, plus technically against the rules.

If you don't have a ham license other hams will know in a second and refuse to speak to you.

Go have a play
http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

 

[Ohlin Karcher]

If you are intending to use thr SSB on a yachtr then you need marine licence.

You can use SSB on a yacht with a ham licence, for any legal purpose. The transceiver is meant to be a special approved marine one if you are using marine frequencies, ham ones may cause interference.
You can use SSB on a yacht, on specific marine channels only, with a LRC.
You can't use ham frequencies with a LRC.

Good thread by the way

 

[maby]

You can use SSB on a yacht with a ham licence, for any legal purpose. The transceiver is meant to be a special approved marine one if you are using marine frequencies, ham ones may cause interference.
You can use SSB on a yacht, on specific marine channels only, with a LRC.
You can't use ham frequencies with a LRC.

Good thread by the way

You need to clarify "legal purpose" - it is contextual. An amateur radio licence is a lot more permissive than almost all other types of radio transmitting licence - in terms of the type of equipment you can use and the things you can do with it - but it only permits operation in the amateur radio frequency bands. The holder of a full amateur radio licence will be better qualified than almost all other licence types, but they are still not permitted to transmit on the frequencies reserved for marine long range traffic.