Radio Long Range Certificate Course

[Wife of Lofticus]

Have inherited SSB on boat we have just bought and have discovered I need a licence to operate. Does anyone have a recommendation of where to go in the vicinty of Southampton to do LRC course ? They seem costly and want to make sure money is well spent!

 

[Simes]

Hi, You can try RT Training in Portsmouth, he advertises in most YM's. Warsash college also run a Long Range Course.

I have heard that Warsash run a distance learning course for long Range Radio.
UKSA also have a Long Range Course.


Hope that this helps

Simes

 

[mikemanor]

LRC course

I did mine at Yachtcom in Burlesdon. I did the full 4 day course. Very Good!

http://www.yachtcom.co.uk/

Mike

 

[KellysEye]

I'd recommend RT Training who are in Hamble. Jane and I did out LRC course withthem and John is a very good teacher - http://www.marineradio.co.uk/lrc.html

But as you will see he's not good at web sites

 

[Gerry]

Another vote for yachtcom in Burlesdon, sorted us out just fine!

www.gerryantics.blogspot.com

 

[Wife of Lofticus]

Many thanks, thats 2 all, so I guess I need to check available dates at both places and take it from there.

 

[oldvarnish]

I did mine at Yachtcom in Burlesdon. I did the full 4 day course. Very Good!

http://www.yachtcom.co.uk/

Mike

Agreed.very good course,well taught.

 

[SimonJ]

LRC Qualification

Have inherited SSB on boat we have just bought and have discovered I need a licence to operate. Does anyone have a recommendation of where to go in the vicinty of Southampton to do LRC course ? They seem costly and want to make sure money is well spent!

If you are going cruising to, say, the Caribbean you would learn that the majority of cruisers are operating their HF radio on marine bands without the benefit of completing any formal training let alone acquiring any qualifications. This is clearly not legal, but it has become custom and practice.

Marine band HF now seems to be almost exclusively used by cruisers and maybe a few fishermen (presumably equally untrained). Commercial vessels use SATCOMs as do warships although in the present digital age I understand the latter may return to HF which has become more efficient (certainly cheaper) than satellite communication. The result is that HF is not well policed (probably through lack of interest) & probably not at all). US VHF operators when in US waters do not need a license although in International waters they should. It is usually quite evident too! But these same people also manage on HF equally unqualified.

HF operation is really quite simple in its basics & easy to pick up if you can operate a VHF- more channels/frequencies than VHF and a choice of frequencies has to be made to suit range, time of day and conditions. Auto tuners mean you can pretty well go to your chosen freq and get on with it. If you go cruising and find you are one of the few who has trained you might wonder why you have gone to that trouble and expense. I do not condone this degree of amateurness but I just wanted to warn you. Many will rightly say - in the legal sense - you must have a cetificate, however ...! I would not want to hear you say later on, nobody told me this!!

There are a few things essential to make sure your HF works well but I suspect the formal training does not cover this very deeply anyway. Such as good power supplies/batteries/connections. Earthing and aerial arrangements etc. There is lots on this forum that has been dealt with before if you search.

Ham radio is of course quite different. It is user policed ( rather efficiently) and quite lengthy staged training and experience is required before you can operate. You would not be able to operate without a 'handle', I believe it is called - callsign anyway.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.