NASA Navtex plus 6

[Guest]

Has anyone experience of reception from these in harbours of the South coast? Or Bristol Channel? I'm particularly interested in Dartmouth/Plymouth area, as I'm thinking of buying one. I know they're ok at sea, but in harbour? 490 and 515 Mhz?

 

[milltech]

I'm not sure what you mean by "plus 6". There's a basic Nasa LCD Navtex (518), then there's the Navtex Pro Plus dual (490 and 518), better software, display, and backlit screen. Both of these come with a cradle mounting bracket.

More recently there's the addition to the Clipper range which is further improved and has both 518 and 490 switched on the unit plus a very neat small aerial. It only bulkhead mounts.

Navtex is not "line of sight" reception and is pretty undemanding. It is expected to operate within 400 miles of major ports and I'd be very surprised if there was anywhere in the UK, including a celler in Birmingham, where you could not get excellent reception.

490 is a local language forecast, but since Navtex is in our local language anyway it is used in the UK for inshore waters.

Needless to say I sell them all! www.allgadgets.co.uk



Boat Junkie

 

[vyv_cox]

In Holland we normally receive Navtext broadcasts from UK (Cullercoats, Niton and Portpatrick), Norway, Belgium, France. Sometimes we receive Iceland and Spain and once Jugoslavia.

 

[colin_jones]

There are no rx problems along the south coast either in or out of harbour.

I think you are confusing 2 makes of Navtex. There are a couple of NASA Navtex rxers which are fine and a more expensive ICS 6 plus, which is also excellent. The next issue of PBO has a Team Test of most of the Navtex units on the UK market

 

[milltech]

Yes that's more than possible, with the requirement that the transmission will work 400 miles from major ports, and the fact that radio propagation is much better at night, distances for 1000 miles or more are not uncommon.

Boat Junkie

 

[JerryHawkins]

ICS Nav 6 Plus

I have an ICS Nav 6 Plus (490/518Khz) and it works fine most of the time in the marina (Plymouth). I have turned off most stations except Niton and the only problems I've had are the occasional missed local inshore forecast on 490KHz - this has been put down to problems experienced by Niton with their 490KHz transmitter.

Nav6 Plus is also excellent as an instrument repeater if you link it into you other nav systems so that it can see the NMEA data.

Regards,

Jerry