How useful is the RYA online VHF Short Range Certificate (SRC) course?!

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dankilb

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I'm not sure I dare ask this...! But I'm weighing up whether it is worth the £60 for the online course component of the RYA VHF SRC.

I would be eligible to take the exam without completing the course (CAA FRTOL holder). I know how to 'use' a DSC VHF! So I could just read a book. Or even try to blag it?!

However, if the course makes it considerably easier to prepare for the exam - as some do (not necessarily due to their pedagogic quality, but perhaps because they mirror the assessment?!) - then I would consider £60 a reasonable investment. If I might actually learn something or be a safer/better radio operator, then it would of course be a good investment!

Has anyone done it recently and would you say it was 'worth it'?

TIA!
 
Possibly depends on how you learn best? For a simple subject like this I'd prefer to just read a good book, but some people do benefit from a course.

Certainly do one or the other rather than trying to blag it. My dad's a private pilot and for years insisted that he didn't need to bother with any of this "inferior" marine VHF stuff (not suggesting you have the same attitude, or you wouldn't have started this thread). After he finally did do the SRC course he admitted how much he hadn't known he didn't know.

Pete
 
Contact the RYA Training Department for the definitive answer. I was taught 'radio procedure' in a totally different context and found moving to marine RT 'interesting' and often slip into the other mode.
 
I have just completed the course and was finally examined (over a year's delay due to covid) last month. Before you can be examined you have to have a certificate to say you have completed the course.
I hate on-line learning but found the RYA on-line course interesting with a lot of interactive stuff to do.
Was it worth it? Well yes if I intend to charter in the UK which I have been considering as my usual stomping ground is the Ionian.
 
Sandy said:
Contact the RYA Training Department for the definitive answer. I was taught 'radio procedure' in a totally different context and found moving to marine RT 'interesting' and often slip into the other mode.
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Me too - I used land-based HF radio (informally!) while in the Arctic.

I understand that military radion procedures are quite different.
 
Finding a classroom course is nigh on impossible at the moment, all the schools I tried do the course online.

I too have a couple of aviation radio "licences" but the terminology, I found, is so different as to make the training worthwhile.
 
The £60 course fee isn't the total cost as the 'exam fee' and administration of licence issue is another £60. If you want to operate a VHF on board you need to be licensed.
 
sealegsjim said:
The £60 course fee isn't the total cost as the 'exam fee' and administration of licence issue is another £60. If you want to operate a VHF on board you need to be licensed.
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It used to be that if you wanted to transmit other than in emergency you needed a licence. Don't most use a mobile phone these days ?
 
It is indeed an utter farce to charge £60 to teach someone to use a simple radio set. If you have aviation RT experience you do not need to be taught voice procedure and the simple operation of a DSC set is something you'd be shown in the cockpit of an aeroplane by your instructorduting a normal preflight in 5 minutes or so. If aviation charged that amount every time you came across a simple bit of electronics that you hadn't seen before we'd all be broke by now.
In any case few people in practice use DSC in my experience (I've never used it in 10 years of having one) , there is no requirement to even be fitted with it (nor any radio for that matter) so what the RYA's obsession with these things is, apart from £££ is beyond me. (A logical extension of this would be to require a £60 test to use a mobile phone because to date all you'd used was a land-line)
If you've seen the YouTube video how-tos that really is all you need to know.
 
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Thanks all for the responses. I would naturally embrace any opportunity to learn something new (in a new way), but it’s just a question of whether it offers enough content to justify the price (equivalent, say, to a decent textbook).

I was really trying to assess the ‘weight’ of the course itself. In particular, whether it offers anything over the book? (I appreciate the exam fee is another £60 - plus £20 to the local exam centre, all of which of course is fair enough!)

I’ve looked at the example: SRC Taster
…it just looks too me a lot like an interactive book. In other words, providing the same information is a more accessible format. This is the sort of thing I could live without, for the money (although I can see the value, depending on learning styles).

However, if it includes things like:
  • A question bank (or the chance to practice exam questions)?
  • Information not in the ‘Handbook’?
  • A particular mode or style of answering questions that would aid in the exam?
  • Anything else I couldn’t get for the book?!
Maybe that’s a lot to ask for a £60 course?! But that’s also £50 (vs. secondhand book) I don’t have to spend.
 
Agree with @Slowboat35 that the course is nonsense, but it's a requirement to get the ticket. I did mine with a Solent Boat Training in Shamrock Quay in Southampton, and they threw in the RYA diesel course and the VHF book for about £60. The RYA VHF Handbook is very good - if you didn't need the ticket, then it alone would be ample resource IMO.
 
I think the Handbook it is, then, for me. Thanks!

To be fair to the RYA, it would have to be a pretty good course to justify the cost, for those in the rare-ish position of being eligible for the exam without it (with content you couldn’t get from the book and, perhaps, a decent ‘question bank’ to boot).

The exam is of course the important qualifying facor. I presume it is similar to the CAA radio exam, where you spend an hour chatting to an examiner via a ‘simulator’? In my CAA exam, the ‘radio’ was inop(!), so the chap ended up sitting behind me!
 
dankilb said:
I think the Handbook it is, then, for me. Thanks!

To be fair to the RYA, it would have to be a pretty good course to justify the cost, for those in the rare-ish position of being eligible for the exam without it (with content you couldn’t get from the book and, perhaps, a decent ‘question bank’ to boot).

The exam is of course the important qualifying facor. I presume it is similar to the CAA radio exam, where you spend an hour chatting to an examiner via a ‘simulator’? In my CAA exam, the ‘radio’ was inop(!), so the chap ended up sitting behind me!
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The book will help you without doubt. But dont forget you will need to complete the on line course. You will take a knowledge check and passing will give you a certificate with a code.
Your assessor needs this code to proceed with the oral.
Dont shoot the messenger. :)
 
Sandy said:
Then why is most marine RT procedure so bad?
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Because the one essential thing the RYA don't teach - the one thing that is important before all others, is Voice Procedure. ie correct verbal use of the damn radio in the first place! All they do is teach a few essential pro-words and then obsess on teaching button-pushing.
 
Slowboat35 said:
Because the one essential thing the RYA don't teach - the one thing that is important before all others, is Voice Procedure. ie correct verbal use of the damn radio in the first place! All they do is teach a few essential pro-words and then obsess on teaching button-pushing.
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Around 60% of the assessment is voice procedure. You of course have to understand how the whole system works.
It's up to you to go practice when you have your licence.
Imagine the howls on here if another day was required for more money.....
 
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