Steve Cramer wrote: > > My dear wife surprised me with a West Marine Mistral VHF this morning, > along with a waterproof bag for it. The Mistral is not even water > resistant, let alone submersible. Should I exchange it for a truly > waterproof model, or is the bag good enough? Depends on how you intend to use it. I've been using a pair of ICOM IC-10A's for three seasons plus. This model is not really water resistant (battery compartment is basically open to the elements, though the guts of the radio are pretty well sealed against water). So I keep it in a plastic radio bag, and except when using it for a transmission, also inside a neoprene sleeve (padding only), and a small dry bag. Never had any problems. When monitoring (95% of my use), I just lanyard it to a deck eye, and stuff the whole thing under a deck bungie. In gnarly conditions, it goes under the deck in the cockpit, still lanyarded to a deck eye. In an emergency, I'd open the dry bag and haul out the radio (a 2-hand job) to make a transmission. If your use would involve a lot of transmitting -or- storage in a pocket in your PFD, so there would only be one waterproof barrier (the plastic radio bag) protecting it, then I'd be nervous about mishaps. I've had the plastic radio bags develop small tears where something works against a hard edge on the radio. These are field-repairable with a tube of vinyl cement to "weld" the edges back together, but lots of abrasion would increase the number of tears. -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Dec 25 1998 - 14:58:07 PST
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