Navtex 490 reception on Niton - an update

[Sgeir]

Hi Tim, and thanks for your comments. Just one wee thing; you couldn't please make your name a bit shorter as its width has compressed the thread column? Ta.

 

[bluedragon]

Getting Niton (I) and Portpatrick (C) on 490 today in Milford Haven. Inshore forecasts and actuals. The times seem a bit odd, but logging them and will have look again tonight.

 

[bluedragon]

Here's what I received on 490 over the last 12 hours in Milford Haven:

CE60 INSHORE WATERS ISSUED MET OFFICE 0500

CE61 INSHORE WATERS ISSUED MET OFFICE 1100

IE77 INSHORE WATERS ISSUED MET OFFICE 1100

IE78 INSHORE WATERS ISSUED MET OFFICE 1700

IV47 ACTUALS AT 0800

IV48 ACTUALS AT 1200

CV70 ACTUALS AT 1100

CV71 ACTUALS AT 1500

CV72 ACTUALS AT 1900

The early afternoon inshore waters forecast is NOT on the schedule for either station, so maybe they added this on. At first I thought the Niton one was late, but Portpatrick sent one out at this time as well, and the early one was on time.

So...today at least it seems to be working.

PS - lots of French transmisisons on 490 today as well.

 

[Goldie]

Hi Chris, sorry to be late getting back to you, but I've just been away for a week to the West Country and can confirm that we received the inshore forecast and actuals on 490 throughout the week. The odd forecast didn't appear (mainly evenings) but as that was in places like the R. Yealm I put that down to topography (even though 490 should be groundwave I believe). If you want to test your reception, why not programme one of the French 490 stations - we were receiving those OK when we wanted.

Regards, Ian

 

[Chris_Robb]

Hi Ian - I will give that a go - especially as we are in Cherbourg this w/e.

 

[Sgeir]

This is just to confirm that Portpatrick 490 appears to be now working properly - the correct messages at the correct times.

 

[Chris_Robb]

Well, I still cannot get 490, 518 is perfect, so I must have got a fault. I did a factory reset just in case I had done something in the set up that was causing the problem. I will ring the manufacturers - or rather the distributors again - Mcmurdo - who were did not seem to have any experteese in the product, - Navtex 6 plus......

 

[Bilgediver]

Try ringing ICS Electronics ...They might not want to help for political reasons however they designed and originally built these.

ICS

 

[Chris_Robb]

I have now rung ICS. They gave me a good analysis of my problem.

It appears that there are 2 active recievers in the arial, the 518 being the controlling unit, and the 490 being a sub unit. It is common after 5 or 6 years for one of the other to go wrong. If the 518 went wrong nothing would work. But the 490 can easily go wrong without effecting the 518 band. So now I have proof that 490 is working - at least my enquiries to MCA acheived something!!! - I will replace my arial - £150 squids.....

 

[Bilgediver]

The chaps at ICS always were helpful and have been in the electronics for years..In fact I believe one of them was in the systems design team for the dsc part of GMDSS. They started off making telex type modems for ham radio amongst other things so very much hands on.