SSB - be honest, is it rubbish?

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tcm

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Just spent all day and most of yesterday with a mate installing SSB on the boat cos er, well, he seemed very keen about it. Anyway we finaly connected it up and SCCCCRRRRRR REEEECeeeeek uuuuuurrrr and other such noises. My mate seemed delighted that it all worked! Any minute soon we can listen to the news from Canada or Russia, he says. Hm.
 
Realistically, it probably makes more sense now to acquire a satphone for when crossing oceans, and a quad-band all singin' cell phone with the relevant SIMs for coastal waters, and probably have lots of loot left over (compared to the cost of the SSB) for satellite minutes and keeping the booze locker well stocked.......
 
tcm said:
Just spent all day and most of yesterday with a mate installing SSB on the boat cos er, well, he seemed very keen about it. Anyway we finaly connected it up and SCCCCRRRRRR REEEECeeeeek uuuuuurrrr and other such noises. My mate seemed delighted that it all worked! Any minute soon we can listen to the news from Canada or Russia, he says. Hm.
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SSB was good in its day as I well know as I was a Royal Signals officer when the Army gradually converted in the 1960s. Why anyone would consider it on a boat these days when there are far better alternatives I can't imagine.
 
Cornishman said:
SSB was good in its day as I well know as I was a Royal Signals officer when the Army gradually converted in the 1960s. Why anyone would consider it on a boat these days when there are far better alternatives I can't imagine.
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Ship/shore there are better quality alternatives available.
For ship/ship traffic (over considerable distances) SSB is still the most flexible and most cost effective means.
 
Lynn Rival has 'Sat Phone' in the Indian Ocean and it didn't work. According to the news reports, it only works near to shore which I found very strange to comprehend? :confused:

With HF, you are dependant on "sked's" which have to be arranged, there aren't many folk sitting on 'decimal three' 24/7 awaiting your call and this is the trouble. People are now wanting an immediate reply to their calls and as a consequence use a mobile (cell) phones or Sat phones. There is absolutely nothing wrong with HF and I thoroughly recommend it.

It is used extensively in the Western Atlantic, Caribbean and throughout the Pacific Ocean. It is dead in the Med due to the convenience of mobile phones and the shorter distances allowing more regular use of VHF.

73 . . . . /MM :D
 
Cornishman said:
SSB was good in its day as I well know as I was a Royal Signals officer when the Army gradually converted in the 1960s. Why anyone would consider it on a boat these days when there are far better alternatives I can't imagine.
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Got SSB on my boat but then I am a ham radio operator anyway. Of course it works but if you are a bit of a technical numptie and put off by screeching noises, then a sat phone is much more your sort of thing.

I wouldnt rely on SSB for safety / rescue purposes. Epirbs are a much more effective technology. SSB is for weather and chat mid ocean
 
SSB not much use in European waters, but widely used on the other side of the Atlantic. Best use on yachts is for scheduled chats with fellow cruisers, sharing of weather etc.
And, of course, for ocean crossings there's always Herb, but you don't need him to help you get to Cherbourg.
 
Herb

.
Only good reason I can think of to have it is Herb's Southbound weather service. We couldn't hear Herb clearly enough to make anything out on our little Roberts when we left the Azores but were in contact with a French boat for two days who were talking to Herb. After each sked they called us up and passed the info on, and it did actually help us make a routing decision.

Of course, once you have shelled out all the moolah for the SSB kit and it is all working, then it is much cheaper than the satphone. And I also think lots of peeps use it to chat in the Carribbean and suchlike exotic places, so it might be good to have. Keep us posted.

(Plus it makes you a proper cruising anorak Matt :D)


- W
 
We would never cross an ocean without an SSB. When on the ARC in 2006, we were trying to reach a disabled yacht, our Satphone gave up the ghost and the only way we could communicate to get yacht's co-ordinates was by our ssb email. We also got our weather advice from Herb. Keeping in touch with friends too is much easier by SSB and in the Caribbean hardly any boats don;t have one. I am not sure I would bother with one in UK or even the Med.
 
If the satphone was globalstar or thuraya for instance the coverage is very land centric, only Inmarsat and Iridium really give global coverage

On the other hand it could just be c**p journalism
 
I can't agree with the costings above. - sat vs ssb
You can get SSB installed for a couple of hundred quid - doesn't have to be the latest model, as long as it dosn't have too many valves!!!.(power consideration?)
There are skeds and they do a good job, but if the fan is covered in brown at another time of day, you can shout on the marine calling freq (2182 -aren't all offshore rigs widebanded?) or 'break emergency' on any ongoing ham contact you can hear.
I have to say, it helps to be interested in radio communication as well, because SSb is admittedly not always 'plug and play' depending on conditions, but if we aren't anoraks at heart, what are we doing on here?
 
Deep down I know it's Rubbish but

I still want one. Having recently spent some time inside the arctic circle with other nationalites and been told specificaly by the Russians that it was Niet to Sat phones, only the Americans pulled them out after the helicopters left. They laughed at me when all I had on me was some Kendal mint cake, a compass, a very old Garmin GPS and a prayer book and a holy water bottle holding a 12 year old Oban single malt.
 
Personally I wouldn't be without it, but I qualify that by saying that we are currently in the Western Caribbean where almost every boat has one!

I disagree with the poster who says it is of little use in an emergency. We have taken part in and listened in to a number of rescues that have been directed using SSB with the US coastguard and local cruisers nets. There are ham nets that listen 24/7 for distress calls and act as a shore based lifeline in many situations. We have personally monitored four such rescues in the past two years. In each incident the boats were lost although the crew were all saved.

Many of these rescues are initiated after a boat doesn't make its scheduled check in on one of the many cruisers nets. These initiate an immediate concern and in many cases have saved lives. It just isn't possible to get that community coverage from a cell or satellite phone.

Apart from that we download weather everyday both from the sailmail catalogue and via weatherfax from Noaa.

We use sailmail to send and receive emails. $250 a year. It has never let us down. No we can't get pics etc but we can keep in touch with family, maintain a business and contact friends.

There's also the glorious incongruity of listening to the BBC World Service in a distant anchorage!

Yes the newer technologies are great, and it would be wonderful to have them all. But for my money SSB is great value and works.


www.gerryantics.blogspot.com
 
I have spent good time on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Caribbean on my own boat and on deliveries, with SSB, Iridium, or Globalstar and sometimes SSB and one or the other satellite system.

SSB with Pactor e-mail is the way to go. period-dot. I've had watchstanders miss traffic because they were trying to call home on the sat phone and not been able to get a signal. On one delivery we had one crew stand half-watches (we used it for dogging) so he could keep working on satellite connections for weather and e-mail.

With SSB/Pactor I can reliably make connections for e-mail on a predictable basis. Further, wefax is readily automated and I can review synoptic and 500mb charts at my leisure ( *hah* ).

Your experiences are your own, but mine - thousands of miles offshore including crossing oceans - is that SSB / Pactor / weather fax is the way to go.

I'm still trying to figure out a "go-kit" version for deliveries, because sat phones just aren't adequate.
 
tcm said:
Just spent all day and most of yesterday with a mate installing SSB on the boat cos er, well, he seemed very keen about it. Anyway we finaly connected it up and SCCCCRRRRRR REEEECeeeeek uuuuuurrrr and other such noises. My mate seemed delighted that it all worked! Any minute soon we can listen to the news from Canada or Russia, he says. Hm.
Click to expand...

As long term cruisers in remote parts, we love ours which gets used several times a day. We have now purchased a second hand Pactor modem for use with Sailmail. Not only can the SSB be used for communication with other boats and shore stations, it can now receive GRIBs, text forecasts, voice forecasts, navtex, SW radio services (such as the BBC, Radio Australia) and email. Radio Australia were most useful recently in keeping us updated on tsunami warnings out here having had several shakes one morning.


The daily radio nets are the very stuff of the cruiser life out here, particularly on passage. Mechanical and medical problems can be discussed with several other boats simultaneously, weather forecasts, social chat and recipes can be swapped. Try that with an Iridium telephone at $XX/minute.

Very flexible system, it does worry me as a single point failure how much we rely on it.

It suits us. Just my thoughts.

All the best.

Angus
 
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