sat phone or ssb

Re: $2000 bill

"" your absolutly correct,but normaly when you press the PTT its to chat!"

Hi Trouville again!

I'm not sure you understand what I was saying. Even if you pressed the PTT button and left it pressed, you will use no current other than the 'standby' current. It is ONLY when you actually make a sound that the current to transmit is used.

Therefore, even in between words, the current drops off, saving your amps!!

As I said, the only time the full transmit current is sustained is when the PTT button is pressed and a CONSTANT sound is made into the microphone.

Hope you over-wintering somewhere nice!!
 
Re: $2000 bill

OK i see what you meen,Still when i call after a couple of QSOs my batteries are very low. But then ive only got 2X50anp/hr plus one 75amp/hr(or95??) as back up.Before the FB i used my SSB quite often and the batteries were ok.

I wonder what the average AMP consumption would be for half an hours chat?

Just charging the phone and useing the 8w phone to call dips the voltage down to 11.Xv by late evening!!

Have you any advice on how to get coal to heat??I have charcole burner when its going i put cole in "anthresite" and it goes out!Plus the fumes force me out in the rain? I looked on line but cole colefire anthresite etc get no responce--Marice Grifthis and Alard Cole but two had cole fires which heated??

Could it be modern coles no good? I put some wood it that works!Otherwise i have to get 20liter(kg)parrafin. In France parafins getting more economic down to 15euros for 20L! Better retern to my mountain!
 
Hey trouville I was not sneering at the Med - far from it - there is nowhere in the world with so many diverse and different cultures in so relatively small an area. No wonder folks spend a lifetime cruising those waters.

I have always been an admirer of folkboats - good in the Atlantic - now would you want to be out there for years in end in a Bavaria? They are superb boats for their intended purpose but given the choice between single handing in a folk boat and a Bavaria, across wide oceans, I know which I would go for... but then I am a born coward!
regards
Michael
 
What is it? icom 706? yaesu ? or Kenwood and how much? Im more interested in what it is but there will many interested in the price.

MichaelE I never thought you were! i always enjoy your posts which are informative and interesting. Much as i would love to sail in the USA i cant? Thought not impossiable, im quite happy to explore the med and when life becomes to expensive and crowded (port wise) sail the unknown Baltic.

From next year i hope to arrange a "canal" boat to fully explore the Polish and later French canals lots to do and see and never far from home!
I agree a Bavaria would make a comfortable cruiser but i cant aford one and im not really happy with GRP sail boats,MOBO yes but sail No. have tried an alpa 1150 super boat and J24 fast but neither lasted and i wanted back to wood.

The Folkboat has size advantages, also you become invisable in some ports! which is great when places are at a premium!

Your posts are really great!! never any critisum from me!!! I will also mention your web site! a mine of information, i think you really do and have done a lot for the sailing community.

The Jester i looked already at the site but ?
 
For those with a not so large bank account. You might have a look at this website. In addition to the reasonable costs involved, is the low energy consumption. I think it is a great piece of kit for small boats. I expect to purchase one quite soon and will report on my experiences.

JP
 
Re: $2000 bill

Trouville, I think you are right regarding power consumption. And you are using a small 706. Try using the legal marine setup, for example an M802 & AT. Just the receiver uses 2 amps at least, then the AT 2 amps. When you press the button it is 30 amps at full power. A lot of energy for a small boat. I am still pondering what to buy, considering my limited 200 Ah battery bank. It is no wonder that many boats have illegal setups.
 
By coincidence I received an email this morning,from friends which illustrates my point that SSB is far more useful at sea than a telephone because other cruisers will rally round: - this is a cut and paste.......

Cruisers communicate via the SSB radio enroute. The grave drama of the past voyage involved FIRST LIGHT an American vessel which lost its rudder in the middle of nowhere: 1800 miles from The Canaries, 1000 miles to the Caribbean. Everyone communicated with sympathy and advice. We were the closest yacht. We changed course and rendezvoused the following day. FIRST LIGHT was wallowing in huge swells. We had discussed our options. It was impossible to tow them 1000 miles. If they were prepared to abandon ship we could have taken them aboard. That would have been precarious, bur feasible. I had already planned practicalities: three in cabins, three on deck. Then we could sleep in shifts. The food aboard could certainly be stretched to accommodate an extra few. But the question did not come up. At that point they had not considered abandoning their boat which was home to them. Two other boats rendezvoused with them the following day. Like us they sympathized and left, though advice continued to pour in via the radio. Then, unexpectedly, a motor sailor appeared unannounced. They offered to tow the stricken vessel and the offer was accepted. The tow did not go well. The towed sailboat ricocheted 90 degrees from side to side. After only one day FIRST LIGHT decided to abandon ship and we assume, board the towing vessel. Unfortunately there has been no contact with them since then. The rescue vessel does not have SSB radio.


this story is unfolding as you read this post..... Without SSB my friends would not have known about the problem of the American yacht... Quite reasonably the search and rescue services would probably have insisted on abandoning the yacht or sinking it.

Whilst this drama could not have happened in the Med etc it does happen annually in the wider oceans and happened to some friend of mine a couple of years ago when they lost their mast in the Atlantic and 'cruising boats' from miles around rendezvoused with them and gave them enough diesel to get to St Lucia..

SSB's are important - operating licences at extortionate prices are not and many, many cruisers have one without the other!!
Michael
 
Michael,
Thanks for posting your experiences regarding SSB. I'd not seen the use of SSB as important and on previous trips had not taken one. It is now on the list to buy one before we set off on our travels again.
Chris
 
Re: $2000 bill

Hi coco!

> When you press the button it is 30 amps at full power. <

Sorry, that is incorrect I assure you!! Please check the posts above or ring Icom, who will confirm. As I implied earlier, I do not know that this is common to all modern HF sets, but suspect it may be.

If you have an HF rig and an accurate ammeter, you can carry the 'experiment' I suggested above. Only a constant sound/tone will use a constant current.

I suspect that my friend Trouville's problem may be one of battery bank size/age rather than the fault of the radio, DEPENDING of course, on what radio it is. Older ones did indeed use a constant high current on PTT.

HTH's
 
Re: $2000 bill

Just to add to jerryat's post, that of course is one of the major reasons for using single sideband (SSB) mode, it is very efficient becuase you are not transmitting a carrier and the other sideband. They can pull big peak currents, and I confess I don't know what typical 'average' consumption is when transmitting speech, but it's way less than 30A!

It also maybe worth noting that most data modes are 100% duty cycle and so when you send an email via winmail you really are pulling that sort of current for the duration of the transmission - which is one reason why many people reduce their power output for such modes.
 
argh £6,500 bill

blimey. Makes hundreds or thousands of litres of diesel feel dead cheap.

£6,500 you could have flown home 1st class, biffed some employees in person and flown back too.

But obv not have contributed to sbutt, so hence v worthwhile. I think you ought to win a sbutt award for Most Amount Of Loot Spent Making A Post.

Very interesting tho, ta.
 
Re: $2000 bill

Jerryat, yes I have read all the posts, and I am aware of how the SSB modulation scheme works. This is why I said "at full power", that is, I meant 100% modulation. But of course you do not talk for hours at 100% modulation.

Benbow, your remark re. digital mode is very true. This is also one of the reasons why not all rigs are able to work in digital mode without trouble. The final power amp has to be designed for 100% duty cycle, which is often not the case for the smaller amateur gear. The most popular marine rigs (for ex. ICOM, Furuno, etc) are able to do it without a hitch.

There is another issue as well: supply voltage. I assume all the SSB fans have noticed that most of the gear is specified for 13.6 +-15%. This means that below 11.6 volts (which might happen easily) your rig might not work anymore (I heave heard stories of processor reset), or at least transmit with a degraded performance. And a dc-dc converter supplying 30 amps is not a cheap piece of kit. Here I have to convey my congratulations to ICOM for having recognized the problem when designing the new M-801. This rig is specified from 10.6 to 15.6 volts. You can still transmit with an almost dead battery! This is very good news.

What worries me the most with the "marine" transceivers is their appetite in receive mode. I am using HF-FAX to get my weather data, and as you know this is a pretty slow process. Usually the receiver (now an ICOM R-75, eating about 0.7 amps) is running several hours a day to get the various charts. If I would use an M-802 in receive mode, this would mean in excess of 15 Ah a day just for the receiver, and I cannot afford such a drain.
 
Re: $2000 bill

Ok, I understand now.

Yep, agree with you about the 'operating' voltage issue, and it's one of the reasons we sometimes run the engine for 20 minutes or so before talking to Herb for example. It's only necessary if we've been sailing for the previous 24 hours and the towed generator or solar panels haven't pumped enough fat, juicy amps into the batteries!

Even with our 410 amp/hr domestic battery bank, it's difficult to hold the sort of voltage nominally required transmission over this period, and this was the reason for my comments regarding friend Trouville's battery state/age.

I am a little surprised at the length of time you spend on downloading wefaxes Coco. I know there are loads out there all the time, but we found (on our Pond passages anyway) that about five a day in the morning gave us all the info we needed for decision making.

I confess we did start off, a few years ago, down-loading heaps of the things daily, but found that many were duplicated (in part) and though interesting to look at, offered little information useful to us.

As you say, a lot depends on your boats battery capacity and the condition of them.
 
Re: argh £6,500 bill

[ QUOTE ]
£6,500 you could have flown home 1st class, biffed some employees in person and flown back too.

[/ QUOTE ]

...not the middle of the Atlantic I couldn't!
 
Hi Michael,
Appreciate also what I've gained from this thread and your views make sense. I've had one old crystal set yonks ago - but if I wished to get a SSB unit now and did not wish to go crazy with costs - what model would you suggest we look at? If possible, would prefer to keep faceplate size to a minimum....
Cheers
JOHN
 
Hi Swagman,

Have a look at the Icom 706 MkIIG. It's about the size of a car radio yet will transmit pretty well round the globe. If you 'inadvertently' open up the radio to access the marine channels, it will do everything you could want in an HF radio aboard a boat.

And before the "ooooh, you mustn't do that" brigade start pontificating, yes I know opening up is illegal!

A fantastic radio though.

HTH's
 
I have only ever had Icoms and Jerrycats advice sounds good = I think you need an ATU as well - Speak to Icoms - explain what you want and take their advice.

Do not worry about 'opening it up' and do not worry about licences but also do not chat on the ham side or they will get upset = its their hobby so its fair enough. I am sure there are other good sets around but I never had any problems with the three Icoms I have owned and installed myself.
I too know what I posted is illegal

You will not transmit much til you are out of UK waters.
regards
Michael
 
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