Re: VHF radios

From: Eyes4Hire@aol.com-DeleteThis.com
Date: Fri Mar 30 2001 - 13:55:39 PST


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Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 16:55:39 EST
Subject: Re: VHF radios
To: wind_talk@opus.labs.agilent.com-DeleteThis.com
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In a message dated 3/30/2001 12:25:12 PM Pacific Standard Time,
poulton@zonker.labs.agilent.com-DeleteThis.com writes:

> My old VHF radio has stopped charging properly, so I'm looking at maybe
> getting a new one. Who has bought a water-resistant VHF radio lately?
> Why did you pick that one?

I bought the Icom M-1V. It is small a submersible rated but not cheap (like
$280). The #1 reason I chose it was because it uses newer battery technology
and rarely needs recharging and doesn't have the battery memory effect that
NiCads have. Your radio ain't worth much if your allegedly 5-10 hour NiCad
battery won't hold a full charge and poops out after 5-10 minutes of transmit
time. Remember that the battery life advertised assumes that you do very
little transmitting (5% of the time the radio is on or 3 minutes per hour).
>From experience, I know that you will transmit a lot in an on the water
emergency because you will have wind noise on the mike and will be frequently
asked to repeat yourself. Even in calm conditions I have had to make about
twenty transmissions to get simple information across to dispatchers who kept
handing me off. If you can transmit with the radio in the waterproof bag, the
plastic will screen wind noise away from the mike.

The radio has held up well. I do bag it in a westmarine waterproof radio bag
and have been wearing it inside my wetsuit. At the time I bought it, it was
the only radio available with a Lithium-Ion battery. There may be other
models with new batteries by now.

Peter



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