Navtex

[BobA]

Has any one any info about where I can get a Navtex aerial for My Silva S15 - at a reasonable price - or should i just keep listening to the weather forecasts on the trusty portable.

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[Talbot]

SILVA ones are available now - saw them at LBS

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[chriscallender]

I managed to buy an S15 with the navtex accessory from www.yachtbits.co.uk - don't know if the navtex part is available seperately from there since they come as part of a bundle. But it was a good price to upgrade to DSC+Navtex, I wasn't too interested in the GPS repeater funtions.

So far I have a few problems which I have yet to take up with Silva customer service (other priorities recently)

- The memory for the selected stations and messages seems to get cleared when the power is removed from the unit (eg if main battery switch is turned off). Since I usually do this when I leave the boat, its a bit of a nuisance - maybe my radio has some problem (eg flat internal backup battery???). I know of potential ways to add an external backup battery but why should I have to do that with a new radio?

- Related to the previous item, I cannot find any way to switch off the audio alert every time a new message comes in. Since the memory of stations and messages I want to receive is often lost and reset to all messages from all stations this is particularly annoying as the beeper is going off all the time with irelavant messages from Ostende or whatever about navigation buoys many hundreds of miles away which are 200m off station... usually there are many messages in every transmission slot - so the alert is going off a few time a minute during a station's slot. Even if the unit can be persuaded to keep its memory I would like to be able to turn off the audio, so that I could eg leave the Navtex on overnight and read the new weather forecast in the morning without being woken up when it comes in!

As I say I've yet to get around to asking Silva about these issues but my impression the S15 is a good concept which unfortunately hasn't been completely thought through in the implementation unless I am missing something. Unfortunately the little niggles can be the most annoying ones. If anyone has an S15+navtex that is working better than mine, or anyone from Silva reads the forum I'd be interested - otherwise I will get around to asking customer services eventually.

Chris

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[kds]

Chris,
I was planning on buying the Silva which you have, so would be very interested in the answer to the questions you have about it.
Ken

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[RossJStewart]

You can get a Silva S15 Navtex Aerial from Pumpkin Marine on Hayling Island (02392 458794) for £89.95

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