Setting up SSB

[ssnick]

Hi, I wanted to introduce myself and see if anyone on the site had any suggestions on the ssb requirement.

I recently bought the Wylie Hawkfarm Kali O Kalani that I'm preparing for this year's SHTP. I've been looking at different SSB and Ham rigs and been trying to understand what would be an inexpensive set-up that would work for the check-ins.

I have a general knowledge of how it works and even have a no-code Ham license, but I'm having some trouble figuring out what transceiver I should be looking for. I'm primarily interested in voice and weatherfax and using as little power as possible.

I know that there are a number of marine Icom units that will work such as the 700, 700pro, 710, 802, etc... My question is, are there any lower power units that will work as well and cost less? Perhaps the 706? Any other smaller and less power hungry units that will still do the job? I'm only really asking about the Icom units since it seems like they are the most prevelant and I do know a little about them.

Also, I know that legally, it's supposed to be a marine ssb but does it really matter?

Thanks,

Nick

 

[John Hayward]

Hi Nick,

There are lots of options and none of them will always work. If we get a bad sunspot cycle, probably nothing will transmit across the street and those with out satellite phones will probably be penalized for not checking in. Speaking of satellite phones, you can buy one and use it to call someone on shore and have them email the race committee and that qualifies as a check in and will be cheaper than an SSB installation (as long as you don’t chat with it). As for radios, opening up a ham radio to transmit on marine frequencies is done all the time (I am taking one as a backup to the Icom M700Pro onboard which has been opened up to transmit on the Ham bands). It may be a gray area as far as the FCC is concerned, but I personally wouldn’t worry about it. I WOULD worry about not having a ship station license if you plan to transmit on the marine bands and not having a General Class Ham license (no code required for this anymore) if you plan to transmit on the HF Ham bands. An advantage of using a Ham Radio is precisely what you mentioned; you can adjust the power to the minimum necessary to maintain communications. My M700Pro transmits at 150 watts period! In many cases you should be able to hit the communications boat with 5 watts or less since you should be no more than 100 miles away. This makes a Ham radio a big favorite on the power savings scale. All of the radios will be fine for weatherfax, Ham might be a little better here since it has more tuning and filtering options. With Ham or Marine you can also do email via Sailmail or Airmail. The only disadvantage to the Ham Radio is it has 300 buttons and switches that if you are not familiar with it will take some time to learn. Marine radios have about 3 buttons and switches for people that just want to turn it on and use it.

Once you have a radio you need and ground plane and an antenna. The most common antenna is to light up the backstay, which involves replacing the backstay with one that’s insulated. The other option is a variety of mobile antennas that you could put on the stern pulpit, but this is definitely going to give you poorer reception. My backstay is insulated and I am going to have an outbacker that I can put on the stern pulpit as a backup antenna. If you light up the backstay then you will need an autotuner like the Icom AT 120 or AT 130 located in the stern near the base of the backstay. Then you run 4” copper foil all throughout the bottom of the boat and attach it to keel bolts and thru hulls and so on. Try for as much as you can but probably a minimum of 50 feet. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t too bad. Once done, maintenance is just replacing the copper foil as the salt water and salt air eats through it.

At some point, probably not before the race, I am going to replace the M700Pro with an Icom Ham radio opened up for the marine bands for all the reasons mentioned above.

Call me or email me if you have any other questions that I haven’t covered above.

Good Luck,
John Hayward
Valiant 40, Dream Chaser

 

[tiger beetle]

Hi, I wanted to introduce myself and see if anyone on the site had any suggestions on the ssb requirement.

I recently bought the Wylie Hawkfarm Kali O Kalani that I'm preparing for this year's SHTP. I've been looking at different SSB and Ham rigs and been trying to understand what would be an inexpensive set-up that would work for the check-ins.

I have a general knowledge of how it works and even have a no-code Ham license, but I'm having some trouble figuring out what transceiver I should be looking for. I'm primarily interested in voice and weatherfax and using as little power as possible.

I know that there are a number of marine Icom units that will work such as the 700, 700pro, 710, 802, etc... My question is, are there any lower power units that will work as well and cost less? Perhaps the 706? Any other smaller and less power hungry units that will still do the job? I'm only really asking about the Icom units since it seems like they are the most prevelant and I do know a little about them.

Also, I know that legally, it's supposed to be a marine ssb but does it really matter?

Thanks,

Nick

Hi Nick -

I would suggest you talk with Synthia (SSS TransPac race chair) as she sailed a Hawkarm in the 2006 transpac and set up the SSB on that boat - which ought to be more or less exactly similiar to yours (unless there are two kinds of hawkfarms in the world).

As regards power consumption, the Icom M710 and M802 SSB radios have a feature for altering the transmit power (looks like 700pro does not). Generally there's no need to transmit at full 150 watt output, though it often is helpful to be transmitting at 50% power. I have an M802 on the boat and it has worked fine (carry a spare microphone!).

It kinda matters that the radio be type-certified as marine SSB; the principal difference I've heard of is frequency stability the SSB radio is supposed to be better than the HAM radio (though this may no longer be an issue), and the marine SSB radio has a greatly simplied mostly automatic user interface as compared to a HAM rig, which makes the SSB much easier to operate when you're tired at o'dark 30. As a backup radio I really like the small ICOM 706 MKIIG radios (and no, I don't own one yet).

- rob/beetle

 

[ssnick]

Thanks for your responses. I do like the idea of using a ham radio as I like the power conservation feature, the additional frequencies, and the used ones I'm finding are cheaper. It also seems like quite a few of them have been opened up for ssb already. I already have a Ham license so I assume that I could just get the ssb license and be set. From what I've read, the frequency stability difference can only be seen using extremely sensitive equipment and that it doesn't cause any problems for other users. I would also think that if you can reduce the wattage to the bare minumum that that would reduce the effect on other frequencies. If that is not true, please let me know.

The other issue I've heard about is that ssb uses channels that represent frequencies while ham uses the actual frequencies. So when working ssb on a ham you have to either create a channel/frequency chart or pre enter frequencies as pre-sets and that this can be difficult if you want to move to a ssb channel that you haven't previously used. This doesn't seem like it would be much of a problem for this purpose since I assume that we would use a preordained frequency or frequencies throught the race and if I was to go to another channel to talk with someone then I would just manually enter it in. It's not like I won't have the time

Thanks again for the info!