I have for sometime...

P

Peppermint

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chuckled to my little self as I listen to people getting put straight by the CG following abortive attempts to call marinas on channel 16. That was until I found myself doing the self same thing a couple of weeks ago. The VHF I was using accepted channel 80 and then defaulted to 16 if you push the PTT. You had to put in your 80 and press an E for enter key. Now I'm sure this is very clever but it's also a rubbish idea. Anybody else got one of these.

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You will also find that some HH VHF's when the battery is getting low will default to 16 whenever a button is pressed !! I couldn't figure out why my Swiftech and also my Icom were doing it ...... we had been using them throughout night and day and batterys were well down .... charged them and all ok again ..... batt down again - bingo agian 16 etc.


<hr width=100% size=1>Nigel ...
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.qqbaltic.com/index.html>http://www.qqbaltic.com/index.html</A> For all those disbelievers ! /forums/images/icons/cool.gif
 
Was it a Simrad RD68? I had one of these, the stupid enter button was one of reasons I got rid of it.

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Yes, I have a Simrad DSC which behaves like this. The channel has to be deliberately cahnged by keying the new channel and confirming with 'E' for Enter. There's s a CH16 switch which takes you straight back. Our crew are happy using it and we brief new crew on it's use. Of course, one or two don't listen and get frustrated with it, but I like the logic.

The crew most likely to have difficulty are experienced sailors who can operate any conventional VHF. Novices seem to master it very easily.


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Methinks you're a Loose Moose. Radio novices generally have little flight deck experience, or are you the quiet one?

DSC (as part of GMDSS) is a new technology which we're all going to have to get used to. Stop being a dinasaur and be prepared to learn about it, it really does have some benefits in an emergency.

You cannot make a DSC set behave like the old VHF, so this will easily confuse us old farts.


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Simrad RD68 and it's great. Like Tome I only have one crew member that has any problem using it and he never listens to instructions. He also leaves the set tuned to whatever channel he has been working on, so we try to keep him away from it.

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Personally I wouldn't like to have a VHF that required instructions on how to use it. Our old Kelvin Hughes has an On/Off/Volume knob and a dial to select the channel. I have never needed to show anybody how to use it and nobody has ever had a problem with it. But maybe I'm just old fashioned?


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Hear hear

User friendly every time! We inherited a Shipmate GPS with our current boat and after 2 seasons I still need to read the manual every time. It has been delegated now just to run the Yeoman and to provide position data to the DSC on the VHF, that way all I need remember is how to turn it on or off (no there is no on/off switch, only 'set' for on or 'CLR' for 3 seconds for off). I believe Shipmate are now part of Simrad who get a mention in another reply about VHF!

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