New boat came with SSB. Does it serve useful purpose in 2017 or has it gone the way of LORAN?
I'm out of Lauderdale and think my cruising will be limited to Florida & Bahamas.
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New boat came with SSB. Does it serve useful purpose in 2017 or has it gone the way of LORAN?
I'm out of Lauderdale and think my cruising will be limited to Florida & Bahamas.
SSB is quite a bit more powerful than VHF. It's still used by commercial vessels and blowboaters. If it works leave it.
I agree with Scott, keep it, you may need to communicate in an emergency when out of cell or VHF range. You might want to talk to someone who participates in some nets and find out their frequency’s for emergency contacts. John
Do take a few minutes to determine which antenna it uses. When transmitting no one shouod be within 15 feet of the antenna.
Depends on the unit. There's side channels for data and other communications and most guys I know that have them operating are ham operators too. They use them but usually from the dock.
But you can do email and some other basic computer things. Not that its a great way to get high bandwidths but it's pretty cool
When we cruised from Florida to Grenada, SSB was essential for weather high seas forecasts; weather nets; and, weather map facsimiles. Definitely an adjunct to existing and more popular means of transmitting ( and more importantly) receiving information.
If it is an Icom 710 or 802 you can get a Pactor modem that is plug and play and a $300.00 a year Sail mail subscription and hook up to a lap top computer and you can do e-mail, no attachments however, like Scott said pretty cool. John
I'm very ignorant on SSB, but if you can send email, you should also be able to send SMS (text messages) to cell phones with it? You can send text messages through email by knowing the carriers email extension and the persons phone number.
For example if you are verizon customer and put your phone number followed by @vtext.com you will send a text to that number.
9991231234@vtext.com
Most offshore guys use them for relaying fishing info. Plus VHF is useless more than 20 mi offshore