Vhf cost in 1980s?

[dgadee]

I didn't have one in an incident where I could have used it. What would a fixed vhf have cost me in the early 1980s?

And the licence?

 

[DanTribe]

Can't do 1980s at moment, but in Nov 1978 Folkestone advertised Seavoices for £285 or Sailor for £485.+ 12.5 % vat.

 

[Roberto]

Some of them had variable costs, the basic unit had ch16 and perhaps 12-13 (?), to get other channels one had to buy the relevant quartzs and total price could go up very quickly.

 

[Mistroma]

Can't do 1980s at moment, but in Nov 1978 Folkestone advertised Seavoices for £285 or Sailor for £485.+ 12.5 % vat.

I remember the large green enamel Sailor radios from those times. Pretty expensive and a fair percentage of annual salary (possibly 6%-7%).

I remember winning a prize for the smallest boat to finish a race from Edinburgh to Newcastle in 1980. We arrived in an onshore F8 (NNE I think) and didn't have VHF. It was too expensive and our Hurley 20 was pretty basic. I suspect we'd have chickened out further up the coast on hearing the latest weather report, possibly Eyemouth (options are pretty limited).

I vaguely remember considering a VHF at the time and think it was around £250 mark for a basic model. Power would have been an issue as we only had an outboard and small battery.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Can't do 1980s at moment, but in Nov 1978 Folkestone advertised Seavoices for £285 or Sailor for £485.+ 12.5 % vat.

For reference, in 1979 my salary (an entry-level professional academic salary) was £4500, and a 2-bed end-of-terrace house in a village near Cambridge cost £18000. So it's equivalent to a 4 figure sum today; probably at least 6 times as much.

 

[dgadee]

I am writing up my "incident" and want to explain to sailing yoof why I didn't have a vhf. Thinks are so cheap these days! And a lot more safety conscious!

 

[Alicatt]

We bought a multi channel VHF radio for the Wick Lifeboat in the early 1980s it was a little under £400, it was the radio that the radio operator on the boat wanted, it put the lifeboat committee's nose out of joint as they wanted us to give them a 2 channel radio with 0 and 16 only on it as it was a good bit cheaper.

Edit: doing the way back thingy 1980 £400 = £2100 today.

 

[Davy_S]

I seem to remember a VHF radio called the Ocean Star, you could add different channels by taking it apart and placing transistors into peg holes, if my memory still works.

 

[Beelzebub]

A Kelvin Hughes Husun 60 would have cost between £200-£230 in 1983. (I used to sell them)

 

[dgadee]

A Kelvin Hughes Husun 60 would have cost between £200-£230 in 1983. (I used to sell them)

+Vat?

 

[Bajansailor]

Those Sailor radios certainly seemed to be the Rolls Royces of VHF radios in the 70's!

And not just VHF radios have come down in price - I remember buying a Navstar 2000S satnav at Southampton Boat Show in 1988 for my folks (who were visiting me in high latitudes then). It was GBP 500 - I think this was including VAT, and we got a VAT claim form for my folks to hand in at Gatwick when they left, and I subsequently got a refund.

 

[Alicatt]

Those Sailor radios certainly seemed to be the Rolls Royces of VHF radios in the 70's!

And not just VHF radios have come down in price - I remember buying a Navstar 2000S satnav at Southampton Boat Show in 1988 for my folks (who were visiting me in high latitudes then). It was GBP 500 - I think this was including VAT, and we got a VAT claim form for my folks to hand in at Gatwick when they left, and I subsequently got a refund.

I used to install Sailor and Simrad radios for Decca Radar back in the 1970s

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Those Sailor radios certainly seemed to be the Rolls Royces of VHF radios in the 70's!

And not just VHF radios have come down in price - I remember buying a Navstar 2000S satnav at Southampton Boat Show in 1988 for my folks (who were visiting me in high latitudes then). It was GBP 500 - I think this was including VAT, and we got a VAT claim form for my folks to hand in at Gatwick when they left, and I subsequently got a refund.

I bought a Transit satellite navigation system at the London Boat show in 1982 or 1983 (winter 82/83)! We needed one to fix positions on an ice cap with unprecedented accuracy. I can't recall which system it was, nor how much it cost - but definitely several hundred pounds, way beyond the budget of the average boater of the time. The one I got had an averaging function so that if it was in a fixed location it would average the fixed, resulting in a position with an accuracy of a few metres. Of course, this was bought on a business account, not out of my own pocket! For use in the Arctic we had to build it an insulated box with a suitable gel cell power supply. Even gel cells were a new thing then! But I got a trip to Earls Court on expenses!

I still recall the amazement of trying it on the roof of our institution and being able to distinguish one corner from another even without averaging (fixes came in quite slowly - a few per hour)r - a distance of maybe 20 or 30 metres. But a single satellite pass gave an accuracy of a few tens of metres; the more passes, the better the accuracy, down to 2-3 metres. I also recall being unable to reconcile the readings (presumably on the WGS72 datum; in publications we just referred to the "International Datum") with OS coordinates! These days I know exactly why we couldn't, but in those distant days, worries about and understanding of datums was not part of my mental toolkit - and only a few specialists needed to know!

 

[ashtead]

I recall we had a sea voice ? rt100 in the 1970s - I gather they churned then out by the 100s - if interested in history a search using this term will reveal another forum with posts by people like “John” who worked at the factory in Poole and can no doubt tell you a lot on topic. Ours was given for buttons by a retiring auxiliary coastguard so had a full set of crystals . Otherwise a 1980s copy of yachting monthly might be of interest as presumably at time someone reviewed the various sets?

 

[johnalison]

A Kelvin Hughes Husun 60 would have cost between £200-£230 in 1983. (I used to sell them)

That fits my memory of fitting the excellent Husun to our then Sadler 29 in 1987 and I think it cost about £215. The Navico was a bit cheaper but had a very odd design with a rocker switch for changing channels. On the other hand, our Navstar Decca that I fitted at about the same time cost £425. A year or two later I fitted its remote readout that I bought for a heavily discounted £50 from Cruisermart in Southend.

 

[dgadee]

What was the licence fee? I remember someone in a uniform poking around my boat club outside Belfast, asking who had a vhf onboard. I told him there were judges and security staff who kept boats there and he would be better not asking.

Would it have been customs & excise?

 

[Roberto]

What was the licence fee? I remember someone in a uniform poking around my boat club outside Belfast, asking who had a vhf onboard. I told him there were judges and security staff who kept boats there and he would be better not asking.

Would it have been customs & excise?

Hmmm Belfast in the 80s... other countries during violent periods/terrorism years had specific laws with very stringent rules about any radio equipment, example ham radio was only allowed if fixed (mobile and portable prohibited), or if one was left with a flat fuel tank he had to push the car to the petrol station as selling fuel in jerricans was prohibited, etc etc.

 

[oldgit]

I seem to remember a VHF radio called the Ocean Star, you could add different channels by taking it apart and placing transistors into peg holes, if my memory still works.

Resisters

 

[dgadee]

Hmmm Belfast in the 80s... other countries during violent periods/terrorism years had specific laws with very stringent rules about any radio equipment, example ham radio was only allowed if fixed (mobile and portable prohibited), or if one was left with a flat fuel tank he had to push the car to the petrol station as selling fuel in jerricans was prohibited, etc etc.

No, vhf was there in the 1980s and presumably the 1970s. A helicopter flew over Belfast 24/7 picking up radio signals etc.

System X phone system was installed in London and NI before anywhere else in the country. It enabled phone tapping.

I don't think the IRA tended to use public, open communnication channels like vhf.

 

[Boathook]

The first vhf on my boat was a seafarer seavoice where you selected the channel by pushing buttons for the frequency. Made it quick and easy to change channels. Eventually it packed at and I replaced it with an icom with a command mic by the helm.