WIB2 Navtex for Laptop/PC

[Steve Clayton]

The Sales Blurb says:

Simultaneous reception of NAXTEX messages on 490kHz and 518kHz. The equipment contains a ferrite rod antenna, thus the antenna installation is void.

The NAVTEX messages will be read by PC or laptop.

No software installation necessary, simple to use, like a USB stick.

Anyone got one? Is it any good?

 

[crossbones]

How do they get the ferrite rod omnidirectional?

 

[quaelgeist2]

Had one. Does what it says on the box.
(Never worried about the antenna, was lying wherever it ended up)

Battery lasts about 3 days when fully charged - via USB when connected.
Stores all it has received during that period.
Simple to use, would buy it again anytime.

Only disadvantage - needs a PC to read out. I prefer not to use mine that regularly right now.

 

[schmittt]

I've been using one on-board for about 4 months. It's worked pretty much as described by the manufacturer so far but there are a couple of small problems:

1) The ferrite rod appears to be quite directional but I have found a way of improving this very significantly by RF coupling the output from my active antennae (which is an omni-directional vertical whip aerial at the masthead) to the WIB. All it takes is a coil of thin insulated wire (I used 15 loops on a 3 inch diameter cardboard cylinder) connected to the output of the active antenna, the WIB2 is then placed inside the coil with the long axis in line with the axis of the coil.

2) Its difficult to work out when a particular message was recieved as the timestamp on the message file (as seen by Windows Explorer) is sometime in 2005 and doesn't even seem to change in line with the actual time elapsed.