SSB community the med- getting to grips

[Jamesuk]

Hi,

I am in Zadar, Croatia and would like to speak with other people over the SSB.

Any community chats already organised for med sailors that I could join in on?

Cheers

James

 

[Bosun Higgs]

there is / used to be a UK maritime mobile net on 14303 mornings and evenings. Not totally sure of the time but you'll find it on the net.

 

[William_H]

We assume you have the necessary Amateur Operators Certificate and a Amateur licence for the boat with appropriate call sign. They may not talk to you if you are not licensed. good luck olewill

 

[Nicholas123]

We assume you have the necessary Amateur Operators Certificate and a Amateur licence for the boat with appropriate call sign. They may not talk to you if you are not licensed. good luck olewill

lol

 

[William_H]

lol

Sorry am I nieve here. Are you implying that people on SSB using ham bands don't bother with getting the necessary licences.
Or is it LOL because of course every one is licenced. Just interested in understanding the situation. A one time ham olewill

 

[rivonia]

FORGET William H--- It is just another winge

 

[Koeketiene]

We assume you have the necessary Amateur Operators Certificate and a Amateur licence for the boat with appropriate call sign. They may not talk to you if you are not licensed. good luck olewill

How would you know whether or not another operator has a licence?

 

[Nicholas123]

Sorry am I nieve here. Are you implying that people on SSB using ham bands don't bother with getting the necessary licences.
Or is it LOL because of course every one is licenced. Just interested in understanding the situation. A one time ham olewill

It was lol because I thought you were taking the micky out of an over regulated system.

 

[prv]

How would you know whether or not another operator has a licence?

On a ham net, because you identify by your callsign which is only issued if you have a license. Of course, you could make up some appropriate series of letters, but I believe callsigns can be looked up online and it strikes me that shoreside ham operators include exactly the kind of people likely to look up unfamiliar callers to see who they are.

Until I got bored of it, I used to listen in to a US maritime ham net (via a radio connected to the Internet, I don't have any kit myself) and I've heard them "not talking to" a non-licensed operator. The net controller first asked whether he was having an emergency (ie, a random person had picked up the radio to try to call for help) and after establishing that this was not the case he referred to the unlicensed station only in the third person, describing it as "interference" to make sure that any other operators arriving on the net knew the score. To be fair, the unlicensed operator did sound like a bit of a dick.

Note this is entirely separate to marine HF.

Pete

 

[Bosun Higgs]

How would you know whether or not another operator has a licence?

1/ checking on qrz.com
2/ operating style - its usually clear when the operator does not have a licence

 

[KellysEye]

>We assume you have the necessary Amateur Operators Certificate and a Amateur licence for the boat with appropriate call sign. They may not talk to you if you are not licensed. good luck olewill

The Med net is marine band not amateur band thus a marine licence is needed. From experience the net is not used.

>How would you know whether or not another operator has a licence?

You need a licence to get a call sign

As said a marine operator can call an amateur if there is an emergency. Otherwise you need a ham call sign which is different than the marine ones, thus immediately obvious.

 

[Roberto]

On a ham net, because you identify by your callsign which is only issued if you have a license. Of course, you could make up some appropriate series of letters, but I believe callsigns can be looked up online and it strikes me that shoreside ham operators include exactly the kind of people likely to look up unfamiliar callers to see who they are.

Until I got bored of it, I used to listen in to a US maritime ham net (via a radio connected to the Internet, I don't have any kit myself) and I've heard them "not talking to" a non-licensed operator. The net controller first asked whether he was having an emergency (ie, a random person had picked up the radio to try to call for help) and after establishing that this was not the case he referred to the unlicensed station only in the third person, describing it as "interference" to make sure that any other operators arriving on the net knew the score. To be fair, the unlicensed operator did sound like a bit of a dick.



Pete

It's not amateur radio licensees are complete naughty idiots (at least the great majority): under the terms of the amateur radio license, if you as a licensed ham talk to a non licensed person you are legally in breach of the license term and you might have your own license revoked and possibly more serious fines.

If it's once in a lifetime it's one thing, if it is for a daily radio net, the caution/callsign checking by the shore stations is understandable imho



rgds

 

[Koeketiene]

On a ham net, because you identify by your callsign which is only issued if you have a license. Of course, you could make up some appropriate series of letters, but I believe callsigns can be looked up online and it strikes me that shoreside ham operators include exactly the kind of people likely to look up unfamiliar callers to see who they are.

1/ checking on qrz.com
2/ operating style - its usually clear when the operator does not have a licence

Thanks both.
However, QRZ.com seems to deal with ham nets.
On marine MF/HF nets, would you just not use the boat's international call sign?
Always used the ship's international call sign when I was a lowly radio operator with the grey funnel line - always assumed rightly/wrongly that yachts would do the same.

 

[prv]

Thanks both.
However, QRZ.com seems to deal with ham nets.

That's correct. Note the first sentence of my post that you quoted.

The OP didn't specify whether he was interested in marine MF/HF or ham, but all the replies were about ham.

Pete

 

[Bosun Higgs]

Thanks both.
However, QRZ.com seems to deal with ham nets.
On marine MF/HF nets, would you just not use the boat's international call sign?
Always used the ship's international call sign when I was a lowly radio operator with the grey funnel line - always assumed rightly/wrongly that yachts would do the same.

the 14303 med net is indeed a ham net not a marine one.

i dont know what you use on marine ssb nets since i dont use them. ham radio is slowly dying - modern kids use the www not ssb. but i had thought that marine ssb was all but dead since the large majority of shore stations have been closed and big ships are now all satellite.

 

[Koeketiene]

The OP didn't specify whether he was interested in marine MF/HF or ham, but all the replies were about ham.

That threw me too.
Since this is a 'boaty' forum I had assumed OP was interested in marine and not ham SSB nets

i dont know what you use on marine ssb nets since i dont use them. ham radio is slowly dying - modern kids use the www not ssb. but i had thought that marine ssb was all but dead since the large majority of shore stations have been closed and big ships are now all satellite.

I agree that SSB is becoming less and less widespread.
Still to plan to get SSB on the boat though, but mainly for the purpose of being able to talk to other yachts not shore stations.

 

[prv]

That threw me too.
Since this is a 'boaty' forum I had assumed OP was interested in marine and not ham SSB nets

But a lot of the cruisers' nets are carried out on ham frequencies. This is all second hand as I've never done either, but I get the impression that marine SSB was traditionally more businesslike while ham was used for chat.

Pete

 

[KellysEye]

>But a lot of the cruisers' nets are carried out on ham frequencies. This is all second hand as I've never done either, but I get the impression that marine SSB was traditionally more businesslike while ham was used for chat.

I've never known a cruisers net either ocean or marina on a ham band, for obvious reasons, we all use marine SSB's. In the Caribbean there is a ham weather net from St John that will do personalised forecasts but only for hams.

 

[Roberto]

I've never known a cruisers net either ocean or marina on a ham band, for obvious reasons, we all use marine SSB's.

...we all ...

Speak for yourself (oh and your "all" friends)

I could list several tens of maritime mobile nets on amateur bands (I have used quite a few myself), though you are so convinced of what you assert that I suppose it would be useless, each to his own I reckon


And oh, shall we have a look at the HF email-data traffic (Pactor, Winmor etc) ?

Sailmail (on marine bands) has about 20 shore stations handling email traffic
and
Winlink-PActor (on amateur bands) has about 80 shore stations handling email traffic
Winlink-Winmor (on amateur bands) has about 70 shore stations handling email traffic

that makes about 150 email shore stations on amateur bands vs 20 on marine bands..

 

[GHA]

I've never known a cruisers net either ocean or marina on a ham band, for obvious reasons, we all use marine SSB's.

Your "we" sounds a somewhat limited cross section of cruisers.....

http://www.cruiser.co.za/radionet.asp

Cruiser's Maritime Mobile Radio Nets

Marine radio nets are set up and run by "controllers" all over the world (Indian Ocean, Atlantic, Mediterranean, Pacific, etc.) to handle and co-ordinate this traffic from vessels sailing the oceans. It is important for cruising yachts to know these radio net frequencies and times so as to pass message traffic, log positions, receive weather information, etc.
Amateur Radio Net Listing

All times are UTC (Greenwich = Zulu = UTC) unless otherwise noted Please listen first to note the procedures of each net.

Net Name	HQ	Covers	Frequencies	Times (Zulu)
MARITIME EMERGENCY NET	Various	Universal	14.340MHz	0400hrs and 1800hrs
Swedish MM Net	?	?	14.303MHz	0530, 1630 & 2030hrs
Mediterranian Maritime Mobile Net	?	Med	7.085MHz	0700hrs
U.K. M/M Net	U.K.	UK waters, Med & Atlantic	14.303 +/-QRMHz	0800hrs & 1800hrs
Intnl. MM Net	?	Atl., Med., Caribb.	14.313MHz	0630hrs
TransAtlantic Maritime Mobile Net	?	Med, N & S Atlantic and Caribbean	21.400MHz	1300hrs
South Atlantic Roundtable	?	South Atlantic	21.325MHz	2330hrs
German Maritime Mobile Net	?	Atlantic, Pacific, Indian Ocean, Med, (worldwide)	14.313kMHz	1630hrs
Micky Mouse Connection	?	S Atlantic & S Pacific	14.113MHz	2100hrs
Mississauga Maritime Net (VE stations with relays)	?	Europe, Med, Atlantic, Caribbean and Central America	14.122.5 MHz	1245hrs
Mobile Maritime Net - South East Asian Waters	S.E.A Mobile	Japan to Seychelles - Hong Kong to N & W Australia. (Specifically: Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, N Australia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, The Andamans & Nicobars, Chagos	14.323MHz	0025hrs & Wx @ 0055hrs
South Africa Maritime Mobile Net	S Africa	Indian Ocean & S Atlantic	14.316MHz & moves to 7.120MHz @ 0630hrs	1130hrs (both freqs)
Italian M/M Net. (Italian & English)	?	Wx for E & N Atlantic and S Atlantic between Africa and Brazil	14.297MHz	2000hrs
'Le Reseau Du Capitaine' Net	Montreal, Bi-Lingual	Atlantic, Caribbean & Pacific	14.118MHz	0700 local & 1830loc. for Wx
Caribbean M/M Net	St Croix	Caribbean	7.237/241MHz	1100hrs
Caribbean Weather Net	?	Caribbean Wx	7.163MHz	1030hrs & 2230hrs
Caribbean Wx Net	?	Caribbean Wx	3.185MHz	1030hrs & 2230hrs
Puerto Rico Wx Net	?	Puerto Rico & Virgins	3.030MHz	2310 & 1110hrs
Barbados Info Net	?	Caribbean	7.185MHz	1230hrs
Partyline Net	?	Caribbean & Central America	14.260MHz	2000hrs
Gulf Coast Hurricane Net	?	Gulf Coast	3.925MHz	0100hrs
Carribus Net	?	US E. Coast, Caribb	14.283MHz	1100hrs
http://mmsn.org/	?	Atlantic, E Pacific & Gulf of Mexico	http://14300.net/	1700hrs till 0200hrs
Panama Canal Connection Net	?	Pacific - Mexico to Galapagos, Atlantic from Belize - Colombia	?	?
Manana M/M Net	?	US West coast to Hawaii	14.340MHz	1200 PDT
http://www.bajanet.jackclarke.netbaja/ Jack VE3EED/W6	?	Coastal Baja & California	7233.5MHz	0800hrs (local)
Sandia Net	?	US W.Coast, Baja	7.294MHz	0330hrs
Happy Hour Net	?	W.Mexico, Baja	3.968MHz	0000hrs
Gerry's Happy Hour	?	Pacific, Baja	21.402MHz	0200hrs (M-Fri)
Chubasco Net	?	Mexico West coast	7.192MHz	1530hrs ST & 1430hrs DST
Waterway Radio & Cruising Club	?	?	7.268MHz	0745 EST
http://www.interconnet.org/	?	N.Am., S.Am., Central Am.	http://14300.net/	0700ET to 1200ET
Bejuka Net	?	Central Am.	7.240MHz	1700hrs
Cal Hawaii Net	?	E Pacific	14.340MHz	1700hrs
Hawaii AM Net	?	content	7.285MHz	1900hrs
Pacific Inter-Island Net	?	Micronesia & up to Hawaii - daily roll-call	14.315MHz	0800hrs
http://www.pacsea.org/	?	Pacific - roll-call	http://14300.net/	0300hrs to 0325hrs
Pacific Maritime Mobile Service Net	?	Pacific & worldwide	21.412MHz	2100hrs
Harry's Net	?	W & S Pacific	7.095MHz	2000hrs
Confusion Net	?	Pacific	14.305MHz	1900hrs
Arnold's Net	?	South Pacific	14.318MHz	0400hrs
N Zealand Wx Net	?	N Zealand	7.080MHz	2000hrs
Roy's Net	Perth, Oz	Wx warnings & then covers boats in N & W Indian Ocean	14.320MHz	1115hr
Comedy Net	?	Oz - Southwest Pacific. Position reports, Wx, local inter-yacht traffic	7.087MHz	2040hrs
Tony's Net	N Z	Positions from S Pacific & Oz region, Wx	14.315MHz	2100hrs
South China Sea Net	?	South Pacific	14.320MHz	1000hrs
http://www.okeranet.com/	Ogasawara Is.	Japan and the Pacific	21.437MHz	03:20hrs zulu
Seagull Net	Hokkaido Is.	Japan and Pacific	21.382MHz	22:00hrs zulu