Re: GPS and CB/Ham questions
There are a whole bunch of things that need to be discussed here, and probably won't be.<br /><br />How about starting with the radios. You mention CB and they are actually a pretty common item on boats on lots of lakes in the midwest and northeast, maybe the west too for all I know. They have a very limited range, typically only about 3 miles or so, but if they are what is in use where you boat then they are what you should have. It doesn't do any good at all to have the world's niftyest VHF and everyone else be on 6 meters. Match the hatch so to speak.<br /><br />Marine radios come in two versions, VHF and SSB. There are specific frequencys set aside just for marine use and they are not covered by a HAM license, although they are close. If you are a HAM its likely that you began with a license that alled you to to operate on 2-meters, which is the frequency band running roughly around 144 mHz. The marine VHF band, which uses FM signals, is in the same neighborhood, being centered around 156 mHz. There are a lot of HAM 2-Meter radios out there that can be modified to operate on the marine frequencys. I have one, but that's another matter. A Marine VHF is the number 1 piece of safety gear on a boat in almost all areas and certainly in any saltwater area. These are all line of sight and have limited range, generally in the 5~10 mile range for most small boats and up to 20 in some very good circumstances. At any rate they are line of sight so a tall antenna is a must. If you plan to venture off shore you simply have to have one, and a good antenna too. Limit your search to whatever you find that is made by either ICOM or Standard Horizon and you'll do just fine. Make sure you do not skimp at all on the antenna. No radio is any better than its antenna. The next side to the Marine band is the SSB, which operates in the High Frequeny range. The band is wide and has much different characteristics than the VHF. For one thing you can usually communicate with them up to 6,000 miles and farther We aren't going to get into wave propogation here but you can generally think of it as bouncing off the ionosphere and gaining long range in doing so. They cost a lot, they take a lot of power to drive them, and they are not what you want.<br /><br />Now the chartplotter. Any of the recent hand held versions will do you just fine. I'd recommend the Garmin GPS-72 for you. It is a plotter but without maps. To get them you have to pay more. What it will have is navigation aids, which is all you really need anyway. Run it off batterys if you like or run it off a power cord. You can simply velcro it to your dash if you like. That's how I use my GPSMap-76 (same thing but with mapping) as a backup in our boat. If you want a large screen chartplotter you're going to have to spend a lot more money.<br /><br />Thom
