Fly Bridge VHF replcement

[Peter]

My fly brige VHF crumped today. It owes me nothing, being of venerable age and the survivor of much salt spray. But now it is time for a new one, and PDQ.

I am thinking of simple and inexpensive due to the harsh environment, but quality because it is the radio I use the most, and another dead radio in the very near a future isn't my plan.

Which ones are good and what is to stay away from? Are there any marketing language tricks to the DSC stuff.... like when they used to call a flat screen TV "HD ready" but that didn't mean it could actually display in HD; only receive it.

Actually DSC feature isn't a big deal to me. I have not had it yet, so maybe I just don't know what I am missing.... but it looks like I'm going to pay for it one way or another, so I might as well get a radio that actually delivers a useable version of it.


Thanks.

Peter

[AndreF]

Icom

[In Memory of Vicroy]

Ditto Icom....and my view is that the 125, 125, and 127 models - no longer in production - are the best....big and heavy, but pretty much bulletproof.....look on ebay, these models show up there often...I have a 125 on AJ that survived many a dousing and one helluva lightning strike...I bought a 126 on ebay for $100 a few years ago.

I'm an old radio guy and the Icom products are way ahead of everything else...I have their 802 SSB on AJ - guess its now 4 or 5 years old at least and still state of the art stuff.

Go with Icom.

UV

[Brewster Minton]

Icom. The best there is.

[coolair]

i had the 504 icom, but am replacing it with the garmin, mainly because the garmin is nema2000 and has AIS, so icom unless you want to go fancy

[Peter]

I am trying to get up to speed on this new DSC stuff tonight.

I am curious about how you hard core fishing types feel about the ability of other boats to "ping" your location?

It all sounds good for collision avoidance at sea, but when it comes down to the big tournament do you really want the other fellows to know where you are?

I suppose it can be shut off somehow.....

Another subject I am not yet clear on yet is this "Digital Call thing." You can digitally set your radio to call only a single other vessle (if you know her ID, like knowing her phone number) at a time. It's like a cell phone call.... and she sees who is calling and subsequently decides to answer or not, like having caller ID..... but here is the part that confused me in the manual I was browsing:

If you call the other specific vessle, it is possible that her radio will then automatically change to a pre-agreed and programmed communications channel.

Again; sounds nice in theory, but if she is chatting with someone else, or just listening in to another important conversation it might really be a pisser for her radio to automatically switch to the other channel.

Also; Is that "other channel" just a standard VHF channel, or some sort of digital private channel? I'm not yet clear on that either, but voice scramblers are available..... and I guess in that case your buddy had best have an un-scrambler. So that suggests to me that the "communications channel" is in the clear, i.e. not private, or why scramble the conversation?

Lastly, and this is an outcropping of the above "call" feature:

If any vessle with DSC hits the "all stations" broadcast button, supposedly for a securite call, everyone's radios switch to the "priority" station to hear the securite call.... The default is ch 16, but its programmable too.

I don't know about you guys, but in my harbor the ferries and commercial stuff are often making securite calls. I can't imagine how annoying it would be to have my radio switch off whatever chanel I'm on to 16 (or 9 or 13) every time one of those guys keyed his mic.

But I am still very green at reading about this stuff, so I may be wrong in my understanding. GOD I hope so.

Do we really need radios that "enhance our safety" by automatically switching channels all the time and broadcasting our whereabouts to everyone whenever their radio sends a "location request?"

I dunno.... it seems a little Big Brother to me. I'll take my manual setup and put it on the channel I want to listen to; which sometimes is 16, and sometims is 13; and sometimes something entierly different depending on what makes sense.

The good nes is that if I don't send in my registration fo rmy digital ID for my radio, none of that stuff works.

Peter