Which licence? Marine HF or Ham

[Bilgediver]

John Boy sailed off into the blue many moons ago so any comments here are irrelevant and possibly he is now is fully qualified.

 

[TNLI]

Once you get outside of Uk waters no one gives a toss whether you have an authorisation chitty or not because no one cares.

If you want to use an offshore HAM band network, you will normally be asked for your callsign when you first start using a net and the folks that run those nets are no fools in terms of recognising homebrew full licenses (Foundation or Intermediate tickets are no good for a maritime mobile). I've know the Guardia confiscate a nice ICOM rig because the skipper was reported for using South bound Two (Based in Bermuda) by another sailor, who was peeved at the fact he had been causing a lot of interference due to a iffy ATU or power supply issue.

You can use HF anytime for an emergency, but to take the attitude that HAM licences are not required outside the UK is not good.

 

[Boathook]

A 14 year old thread.

 

[TNLI]

A 14 year old thread.

THE OLD ONES ARE THE BEST!!

 

[Bilgediver]

About half of all around the world sailors have either a SSB or ham radio which has been "fixed" which mean they can operate on both marine and ham bands and only a ham license, and has never run into trouble anywhere.

That might be the reality in many places. However one good resource is the Winlink system and they have had a wee bit of trouble from the boys in Washington over third party traffic so tightening up control of who gets through and who doesn't. There are now certain restrictions in place so having the right authentic call sign might be a big help!

 

[MarkCX]

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[GHA]

That might be the reality in many places. However one good resource is the Winlink system and they have had a wee bit of trouble from the boys in Washington over third party traffic so tightening up control of who gets through and who doesn't. There are now certain restrictions in place so having the right authentic call sign might be a big help!

Bit more than that, you won't get away with not having a genuine ham call sign for more than a few moments talking over the airwaves, especially calling marine mobile. Pretty much all the hams are on the web and the call sign goes straight into a database, if it looks dodgy no one will speak to you. For a non US callsign winlink will only become an issue if you want to use US stations, they don't control the world.