Picking up marine band radio

One More Toy

Hello

My father is very interested in big ships eg trawlers etc (dont ask - old age!)

He follows away the ship tracker app on the ipad, we are located on the coast with quite a bit of tanker and trawler activity

Any point in getting him a marine band radio with his birthday coming up soon?

Hed be bloody delighted!

Cheers for any responses!

dxhound2005

Some older radios used to have a designated Marine Band or Trawler Band which was the frequencies above the Medium Wave. Nowadays general coverage receivers will include that range.

Listen to 2182 kHz USB (Upper Side Band) on this receiver in Holland at 3 minutes past the hour and 3 minutes past the half hour and you should hear some coastal stations announcing their frequencies to read out weather reports and other information.

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

There is very little voice traffic now on what used to be busy bands like 8 and 12 MHz for radiotelephone calls. If he is in an urban area he will most likely suffer very bad local electrical noise when trying to listen to weak signals like 2182.

One More Toy

dxhound2005 wrote: »

Some older radios used to have a designated Marine Band or Trawler Band which was the frequencies above the Medium Wave. Nowadays general coverage receivers will include that range.

Listen to 2182 kHz USB (Upper Side Band) on this receiver in Holland at 3 minutes past the hour and 3 minutes past the half hour and you should hear some coastal stations announcing their frequencies to read out weather reports and other information.

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

There is very little voice traffic now on what used to be busy bands like 8 and 12 MHz for radiotelephone calls. If he is in an urban area he will most likely suffer very bad local electrical noise when trying to listen to weak signals like 2182.

Cheers! He is in a rural area in the north west about 40m from killybegs port, would a vhf radio and high gain antenna receive much?

dxhound2005

Yes, VHF did not occur to me. My advice would be to get a cheap scanner (it must have narrow FM) and take a trip to Killybegs to see what is on the air. The Marine VHF band is from 156 MHz and Channel 16 is the calling and emergency frequency. There are plenty of frequency guides online like this one.

http://www.longcom.ie/product.aspx?id=197

And rather than setting up a permanent listening post at home, he might get better results by going to high places nearby with a scanner. VHF depends on line of sight and higher is usually better.

One More Toy

dxhound2005 wrote: »

Yes, VHF did not occur to me. My advice would be to get a cheap scanner (it must have narrow FM) and take a trip to Killybegs to see what is on the air. The Marine VHF band is from 156 MHz and Channel 16 is the calling and emergency frequency. There are plenty of frequency guides online like this one.

http://www.longcom.ie/product.aspx?id=197

And rather than setting up a permanent listening post at home, he might get better results by going to high places nearby with a scanner. VHF depends on line of sight and higher is usually better.

Thank you for the help! He'd be delighted to hear the odd interaction now and again!