Yes, that's interesting Mike... under the old system here in Australia your rig was licensed as a 'ship station' which meant that you [ the humble kayaker ] had the same on air authority as a super tanker. That was the beauty of the system; but of course that meant you had the same procedural and licence responsibilities as the radio operator in the super tanker. I can see the VHF environment fast eroding on air, as more and more people on the fringe of the various recreational boat fraternities take up VHF. DSC is here, but not compulsory as far as I know, and unless someone comes up with a waterproof miniaturised GPS/VHF combination I can't see DSC being viable for kayakers. Down here most of us will probably go over to 406 EPIRBs as the cost goes down and they get smaller. Cheers, Peter Rattenbury. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
On 19 Apr 2005 at 15:46, Peter Rattenbury wrote: > unless someone comes up > with a waterproof miniaturised GPS/VHF combination I can't see DSC > being viable for kayakers. One absurdity is that there are handhelds that have VHF/GPS without DSC and VHF/DSC without GPS, but no VHF/GPS/DSC*. Given that GPS has been implemented in a single, postage-stamp-sized package and needs a simple antenna, a very basic "position only" GPS built into a VHF/DSC handheld is a no brainer. The idea that one should plug a handheld into a GPS is not a selling point for us. Even if they did do that, it wouldn't help me much - they aren't implementing DSC on the Great Lakes and I couldn't use it unless I travel to the ocean. Mike * among generally available handhelds. I haven't checked on the very pricy, lifeboat VHF units. They run around $1500+. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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