Thread: vhf radio

hi everyone,
went fishing out over the bowentown bar yesterday, made a trip report to the coastgaurd as normal with the vhf radio, then on returning and trying to close my trip report couldn,t raise anyone and realised I hadn,t heard any other radio traffic all day...I ended up ringing to close my trip report and the operator said she could hear me trying to call, ie the push to talk was operating the repeater but I couldn,t hear any squelch, seems to me the speaker in the radio has failed...anything else it could be?
cheers
Ray

Does it have an "international" button?
That can interfere with transmission.
Probably @gonetropo and @mikee territory

Difficult to be certain with out the right gear but
16 TX/RX frequency is same on all 3 settings Int (International) USA (obviously US) and C (Canadian).

make sure set to International then select the weather NOWcastinghttps://www.boprc.govt.nz/living-in-...ther-and-tides

If you cant hear the wearther informtion then you could have a dodgy antenna or the radio could be poo. You could try Burnsco and see if you could try one of there antennas and see if it solves the issue and if so buy it ( you might need to take your boat down for this)

You can test Tx/Rx if you have a mate with a handheld VHF, put both on Low power on Chan 8,9 or 10 and try communicating.

Usually its the antenna that is rooted. We have a RF test set at work for checking VHF itself and SWR meter for testing Antenna and cable however thats no good to you as its not something most service shops have due to cost.

We have a RF test set at work for checking VHF itself and SWR meter for testing Antenna and cable however thats no good to you as its not something most service shops have due to cost.

Bay marine electronics in Tauranga have the kit to test the VHF

I guess the first thing you could do is just check all your connections as in unplug them and have a good check for corrosion check around the antenna base as well etc. Marine environment is not a friendly environment for electronics...

What brand and model of radio? Could be a couple of things - where is the speaker located on the unit i.e. do you have one that can be set to project from the handpiece (i.e. RSM handpiece remote speaker/mic) as an option but if you just have a remote (non speaker) mic handpiece and the radio is set to remote speaker then that might be your issue. If you are transmitting and everyone can hear you then most likely the common issues with antenna failures and water ingress or corrosion aren't the main issue as attenuation of transmitting power normally means that people can't hear you transmitting.

Normally in my experience of these little beasties you can hear everything but can't transmit when there's an antenna failure or water in a connection etc leading to a loss of Tx power or attenuation of the signal output (Rx requires less power so often still functions happily even though the Tx side has raised the index finger), which makes me suspect that you've either got a setting that's been changed or a failure of the base or handpiece. Been through this a few times with commercial radio surveys, first thing I'd do would be to get a visual on the antenna for damage and connections at either end of the antenna coax cable and confirm they are good and undamaged and also as best as possible check out the cable itself for kinks and damaged sections. If it all looks good, go through the base settings and make sure it's on International channels and then try the nowcasting weather service to see if you can hear. I've had one case where we turned up on a job and couldn't transmit off the base set on the boat to do the site radio checks, but we could hear the site control room at the other end of the lake. We had managed to find a piece of tree on the drive in which broke the cable off from the base of the antenna but the cable had sprung back into it's hole so passed the cursory visual check. Flogged a coax off the other boat (two radios on that one) and got it back running on Tx again.

If the antenna cable check doesn't turn up the culprit, easiest is as the two guys above have suggested - get into someone with the test kit to plug into the antenna cable and verify what the Tx power is like and that will tell you if there is an issue with the transmit circuit. As I suggested though, I suspect that you will find the issue is in the base set as from my experience if everyone can hear you but you can't hear them then it's unlikely to be a failure of the antenna circuit.

I think its best for me to defer to others experience.
In any case most vhfs will not be worth fixing. If you do replace it. Replace antenna and cable too. Its cheap insurance if you need to summon help!

thanks for the input everyone, got up on the hardtop yesterday and sure enough the coaxial cable to the antenna was perished and cracked as I moved it around, so decision made I drove into tauranga to burnsco, purchased a new radio and antenna for $329 and installed it yesterday, test call to waihi beach coastgaurd and jobs right.
best solution for what is an essential bit of kit over here.
cheers

Ray

Follow up question.
Can anyone buy and use a vhf radio, or do you need a license?

Originally Posted by Boner

Follow up question.
Can anyone buy and use a vhf radio, or do you need a license?

Anyone can use a VHF for emergency communications.
For general use (legally) are supposed / should have a Callsign allocated to your vessel and preferably do a Coastguard VHF Operators certificate.
Reason for operators certificate is so you know the correct protocol / format for emergency communications and on which channels

Yep. Not hard to do the restricted radio licence to allow you to use the VHF for non-emergency purposes (including routine trip reports and gasbagging with ya mates). Interestingly enough - the Coastguard procedure at the moment assigns ownership of a callsign to an individual and not to the vessel. You might have the callsign on the vessel's commercial survey documentation but you can't lodge the ownership of the callsign to the vessel, so if you purchase a vessel in survey you have to apply for a new callsign with coastguard then do all of the transfer paperwork for MNZ as well as (to be strictly correct) getting the radio inspection redone and the commercial radio survey reissued with the correct callsign. Not as much of a pain for a recreational boat not in survey, but a rather pesky hassle for a commercial tub with MNZ - then you have to change all of the EPIRB records with RCCNZ to reflect the new callsign.

That's one system that is frustratingly over-complicated for commercial, largely because coastguard have the monopoly on callsign issuing in NZ... Whinge mode off!

Mate just had a brand new replacement radio fail it's survey. Apparently the screw-down antenna's are failing radio survey from brand new due to the connection at the point the base meets the antenna not being up to standard - so the entire antenna and base needed to be replaced with a sealed non-screw-down version just to pass survey. Apparently the screw-down design is an issue and not meeting the test standards for commercial work, but still able to be sold off the shelf for recreational use???

Originally Posted by No.3

Mate just had a brand new replacement radio fail it's survey. Apparently the screw-down antenna's are failing radio survey from brand new due to the connection at the point the base meets the antenna not being up to standard - so the entire antenna and base needed to be replaced with a sealed non-screw-down version just to pass survey. Apparently the screw-down design is an issue and not meeting the test standards for commercial work, but still able to be sold off the shelf for recreational use???

It actually could be neither. There is a brand/range of antennas with removable bases that often have this problem.
"People" or "salespeople" are unaware of and sometimes mix and match the base with the antenna.
In some cases the connector inside is not physically long enough to reach the socket in the antenna.
Personally I wont use them unless customer specifies them.

Usually when you fit the cheaper model base with the more expensive "pro" antenna