I dropped by S/V's Stray Dog and Lionheart at Charleston City Marina,
today, to see if I could get the heat on SD's heat pump going and just
check inside Lionheart to see how my Cap'n mounted the new AIS receiver
display at the Nav station. It look very neat, as usual, but we're running
out of panel space...(c;

After checking his rewiring for errors, I fired it up and let it run while
we worked on Stray Dog's damnable marine A/C mounted in a hanging locker.
Typical marine POS. It'll cool but won't crank in heat pump mode. We got
pressed for time as her Cap'n had an appointment so I'm going back to fix
that. I got the damnable water pump reprimed, the filter mud/wigglers
cleaned out. Nuts. Wish it were a COLEMAN RV! That's too easy.

AIS display was loaded with targets, 3 of which were offshore lots of
miles, two headed East and one West into the harbor channel. Great range
from the Metz on top of the mizzen. A new antenna coax switch switches the
antenna from the AIS receiver to the emergency VHF, an Icom M-59 that came
with the boat. I think I'm going to add a power switch beside the antenna
switch behind the panel so noone keys up the M59 without an antenna
connected which doesn't do its transmitter IC Brick any good....

Best range I saw was about 22 miles! Amazing on only 12W on VHF. Ship
must have had a tall antenna....(c;