Navtext

[Ric]

This boat, Furuno, as others have recommended. Much better bit of kit, and the display is easier to read. More expensive, but worth it.

Looking at the still photos of the Furuno, the text size seems very large, meaning only a few lines fit onto the screen. Does that not mean a lot of scrolling to read messages? Or can the text size be modified?

I have a NASA Navtex currently, and concur with some of the other reviews on this thread. There is a lot of scrolling involved to read messages - I would want to avoid that on the next Naxtext I buy.

 

[tri39]

My Furuno is a huge improvement on the Nasa it replaced.
However if you hunt down the relevant Navtex stations online,
you can then receive them on your smartphone within say ten miles of coast.
I use both.

 

[Monique]

Slight lateral thinking...

Think about a SAT phone with data. Get a friend to upload the weather and email to you. Presto, the wx.

I also have a Furuno NX 300... = good kit.

 

[Barry Jones]

All Navtex receivers work on the same frequency; 518KHz.

There should be no regional differences between different makes.

McMurdo, Furuno and JRC are good makes.

 

[Koeketiene]

All Navtex receivers work on the same frequency; 518KHz.

There should be no regional differences between different makes.

Ahem

490 Worldwide national bulletins in the local language.
518 Worldwide international bulletins, mostly in English though some are in the local language.

 

[Barry Jones]

518Khz is the international primary frequency.
490Khz is the secondary frequency for local languages.

Ahem

 

[franksingleton]

Anyone have any opinions on Navtext. We will be cruising Norway & Ireland - should we get one or not????

Liz & Laurence
Tidos
Warrior 35

You might like to see my pages on NAVTEX at http://weather.mailasail.com/Franks-Weather/Gmdss-Weather-Forecasts.

For coastal sailing NAVTEX is more of a fallback than an essential tool given marine VHF broadcasts and the Internet. I think that its main value is for NAV warnings. It is easier to read the text and ignore those that you have seen before than listen and take down from VHF warnings many of which will be of no concern to you.

Out at sea, within about 200 miles of the coast, NAVTEX may be your only source of weather information.

My experience with receivers is that there is little to choose in terms of ability to receive. Main differences are in quality of screen and the software. In some ways the NASA PRO that we used to have was better than the Furuno but the Furuno is easier to read. You may find that the newer NASA sets are considerably better than the previous versions.

The national frequency of 490 kHz is slowly gaining ground. It is used by the UK. Ireland (Malin Head) and Germany for Inshore forecasts. Some other countries use it for national language versions of what is on 518 kHz. I would recomend having a dual frequency set.