I crewed on a delivery last month. The boat had a Garmin combo
sounder/GPS on the bridge. Whenever the sounder was on, we got
interference in both onboard VHFs on channel 13. The interference was
a pattern of 4 "pops" repeated ad infinitum, was strong enough to
break through full squelch, and was also audible in incoming calls..
My guess is that we were hearing the transducer firing, which (though
annoying) didn't seem all that strange to me.

Then we went through several locks that kept their VHF on the
loudspeaker at all times. From a fair distance away, I could hear the
same interference through their radio, even when we weren't
transmitting. It definitely went away whenever I disabled the sounder
function.

I doubt I'll ever ride that particular boat again (it had lots worse
problems than I've mentioned) but I am curious about how the Garmin
could generate so much noise and what could be done to quiet it down.


__________________________________________________ __________
Glen "Wiley" Wilson usenet1 SPAMNIX at worldwidewiley dot com
To reply, lose the capitals and do the obvious.

Take a look at cpRepeater, my NMEA data integrator, repeater, and
logger at http://www.worldwidewiley.com/

Never had problems with Garmin and my VHF they sit within a couple inches of
each other. Sounds like the boat needs some work.



"Glen "Wiley" Wilson" wrote in
message ...
I crewed on a delivery last month. The boat had a Garmin combo
sounder/GPS on the bridge. Whenever the sounder was on, we got
interference in both onboard VHFs on channel 13. The interference was
a pattern of 4 "pops" repeated ad infinitum, was strong enough to
break through full squelch, and was also audible in incoming calls..
My guess is that we were hearing the transducer firing, which (though
annoying) didn't seem all that strange to me.

Then we went through several locks that kept their VHF on the
loudspeaker at all times. From a fair distance away, I could hear the
same interference through their radio, even when we weren't
transmitting. It definitely went away whenever I disabled the sounder
function.

I doubt I'll ever ride that particular boat again (it had lots worse
problems than I've mentioned) but I am curious about how the Garmin
could generate so much noise and what could be done to quiet it down.


__________________________________________________ __________
Glen "Wiley" Wilson usenet1 SPAMNIX at worldwidewiley dot com
To reply, lose the capitals and do the obvious.

Take a look at cpRepeater, my NMEA data integrator, repeater, and
logger at http://www.worldwidewiley.com/