Is there anything to choose between these two sets for use on a boat
on both ham and marine bands (after appropriate doctoring) ? I am
inclining to the Yaesu, but largely because my main set in the FT-897
and I like it.

I am a bit surprised by the advice to add an SSB filter and DSP to the
Yaesu, that adds a lot to the price. How do the base sets compare?

Thanks

Quite need that the frontpanel on the 706mkiig is detachable. Makes it
easier to install at your nav station.

Bjarke


"Steve" wrote in message
oups.com...
Is there anything to choose between these two sets for use on a boat
on both ham and marine bands (after appropriate doctoring) ? I am
inclining to the Yaesu, but largely because my main set in the FT-897
and I like it.

I am a bit surprised by the advice to add an SSB filter and DSP to the
Yaesu, that adds a lot to the price. How do the base sets compare?

Thanks

On 17 Feb, 20:45, "Bjarke M. Christensen"
bjarkeNG@grevestrand_punktum_danmark wrote:
Quite need that the frontpanel on the 706mkiig is detachable. Makes it
easier to install at your nav station.

Bjarke


So is the faceplate on the FT-857. And the link does not require an
exotic and expensive cable.

"Steve" wrote in
oups.com:

and marine bands (after appropriate doctoring)

If they catch you using ham gear on the marine bands, they'll take your
ham license and ship license and fine you bigtime. It is something to
consider. Unless your 706 or Yahoo has the high stability master
oscillator, it isn't stable enough for marine band use, which is why it's
not approved.

I prefer Yahoo over Icom on the ham bands. But, the Icom M802 is a great
radio for both bands. To put the M802 to full-band transmit, all freqs,
turn it off. Hold down MODE + TX + 2 while turning it on. It now
transmits from 2-30 Mhz. To put it back to just marine use, simply
repeat the procedure. Be careful not to press any other buttons doing
this as many other combinations exist that are undocumented to the users,
that may lock it for an expensive factory reset. I use Lionheart's M802
to an AT-130 loading a 55' backstay and triattic capacitor hat. Works
great on all the bands, considering most of the power it generates is
simply absorbed by the sailing rigging.

Now, which marine rig converted to the ham bands were you buying?

My ham stations are a fully loaded FT-990AC to a Drake L4B with proper
stable HVDC power supply to a Butternut HF9VX vertical mounted in the
center of a metal roof ground plane. Mobile is a fully loaded FT-900 and
highly modified Tentec Hercules II 12V linear feeding a 15' tall homebrew
Texas Bug catcher of my own design at 650W RF output from a '73 Mercedes
220 Diesel with no electronic noise makers, whatsoever, on 160-10M.

I hardly ever use it any more. Skype on the internet is more fun without
those old codgers bitching at you you're on their private frequency
they've been using since 1948....(c;

Larry W4Charleston South Carolina
on Lionheart WDB-6254
an old codger ham since 1957...I was 11.

--
Vista has been out a week.
Is Service Pack 1 ready yet?

On 18 Feb, 06:11, Larry wrote:
"Steve" wrote groups.com:

and marine bands (after appropriate doctoring)

If they catch you using ham gear on the marine bands, they'll take your
ham license and ship license and fine you bigtime. It is something to
consider. Unless your 706 or Yahoo has the high stability master
oscillator, it isn't stable enough for marine band use, which is why it's
not approved.

Thanks for this.

I should have mde it clear. It will be used for ham, including pactor,
and for receiving weather. However it will be modfied to give access
to marine HF. In case of emergency I want all options available. But
it will not be routinely used on marie bands.

The M802 is too big, too heavy and too expensive for my purposes.

Are you saying that the osc's in marine ht/ssb's are more stable that the
osc's in ham hf/ssb's ? Why should that be so ? If icom can make it stable
in the marine ssb; why don't they deploy the same technology in the ham
ssb's ? I guess freq stability is a must for hams as well ??

When the 802 is enabled for ham (using the procedure you describe) will it
do both or do you have to toggle it back constantly ?

You often hear that marine ssb's are difficult to use on ham, as they are
optimised for a fixed freq setting, and not for the more variable freq used
on ham. How big a problem i that ?

Idont know you ham license structure, but where I live only the higest
license level are allowed to use more than 100w. Can the 802 be configured
to run only 100w on ham bands and 150w on marine bands ?

Bjarke


"Larry" wrote in message
...
"Steve" wrote in
oups.com:

and marine bands (after appropriate doctoring)

If they catch you using ham gear on the marine bands, they'll take your
ham license and ship license and fine you bigtime. It is something to
consider. Unless your 706 or Yahoo has the high stability master
oscillator, it isn't stable enough for marine band use, which is why it's
not approved.

I prefer Yahoo over Icom on the ham bands. But, the Icom M802 is a great
radio for both bands. To put the M802 to full-band transmit, all freqs,
turn it off. Hold down MODE + TX + 2 while turning it on. It now
transmits from 2-30 Mhz. To put it back to just marine use, simply
repeat the procedure. Be careful not to press any other buttons doing
this as many other combinations exist that are undocumented to the users,
that may lock it for an expensive factory reset. I use Lionheart's M802
to an AT-130 loading a 55' backstay and triattic capacitor hat. Works
great on all the bands, considering most of the power it generates is
simply absorbed by the sailing rigging.

Now, which marine rig converted to the ham bands were you buying?

My ham stations are a fully loaded FT-990AC to a Drake L4B with proper
stable HVDC power supply to a Butternut HF9VX vertical mounted in the
center of a metal roof ground plane. Mobile is a fully loaded FT-900 and
highly modified Tentec Hercules II 12V linear feeding a 15' tall homebrew
Texas Bug catcher of my own design at 650W RF output from a '73 Mercedes
220 Diesel with no electronic noise makers, whatsoever, on 160-10M.

I hardly ever use it any more. Skype on the internet is more fun without
those old codgers bitching at you you're on their private frequency
they've been using since 1948....(c;

Larry W4Charleston South Carolina
on Lionheart WDB-6254
an old codger ham since 1957...I was 11.

--
Vista has been out a week.
Is Service Pack 1 ready yet?

But if 'emergency' is a concern to you, you should have the distress
function that is only availbale on marine ssb's.

I don't get you point with the weight. Don't you carry some 200 liter of
fresh water ?

price I agree. It's clear that there is to litlle competition on marine
rig's and consequently the prices are 20-30% higher for the "same" rig.

Bjarke

"Steve" wrote in message
oups.com...
On 18 Feb, 06:11, Larry wrote:
"Steve" wrote
groups.com:

and marine bands (after appropriate doctoring)

If they catch you using ham gear on the marine bands, they'll take your
ham license and ship license and fine you bigtime. It is something to
consider. Unless your 706 or Yahoo has the high stability master
oscillator, it isn't stable enough for marine band use, which is why it's
not approved.

Thanks for this.

I should have mde it clear. It will be used for ham, including pactor,
and for receiving weather. However it will be modfied to give access
to marine HF. In case of emergency I want all options available. But
it will not be routinely used on marie bands.

The M802 is too big, too heavy and too expensive for my purposes.

"Bjarke M. Christensen" bjarkeNG@grevestrand_punktum_danmark wrote in
:

But if 'emergency' is a concern to you, you should have the distress
function that is only availbale on marine ssb's.



Useless. The half-assed DSC/GMDSS implementation on pleasure craft
marine HF is damned near useless.

If he's going to spend money on EMERGENCY radios, he needs a 406 Mhz
EPIRB with its OWN GPS receiver built inside it, not some bogus GPS-ready
he hooks his GPS to. You don't even have to press the button, just let
it float and off she goes. They ALL pay attention to the 406 EPIRB going
off.

Hell, CG doesn't pay attention to boys screaming for help after their
stupid father/uncle rammed his sailboat into the Charleston Jetties.
There's no doubt they are in trouble. I've listened to the tape the
local radio station FORCED them to release under Freedom of Information
Act. How any CG watchstander could have just let them all drown for fear
of getting the boat crew out of their racks has never left my mind. How
soon the rest of the world forgets the "Morning Dew" incident.

The cure for this is 406 EPIRB notifying the big guns who are NOT afraid
of waking up the CG to do something and have the horsepower to do it. HF
is DOOMED. All the commercial stations that DID do most of the
listening, except for the Alaskans I'm going to get lambasted by for
saying it, are gone! Try it for yourselves! Switch to one of the CG
frequencies and CALL 'EM. I did. On the 5th frequency, I FINALLY got
ONE CG radio operator who was awake. I pointedly asked him why noone but
him was monitoring those other 4 frequencies. He didn't know.

I'm well versed in time-of-day HF propagation, the physics of HF. I've
been a ham using it since 1957. Right now, the bands are in awful shape,
the sunspot cycle near its low. 150 watts into all that rigging doesn't
make the trip very well in these conditions. You're much better off with
an Iridium phone so you can call 'em on the landline!

Larry W4CSC and other fine old calls since 1957.
--
Vista has been out a week.
Is Service Pack 1 ready yet?

"Bjarke M. Christensen" bjarkeNG@grevestrand_punktum_danmark wrote in
:

Are you saying that the osc's in marine ht/ssb's are more stable that
the osc's in ham hf/ssb's ? Why should that be so ? If icom can make
it stable in the marine ssb; why don't they deploy the same technology
in the ham ssb's ? I guess freq stability is a must for hams as well
??

Yes, of course. Ham radio has only one channelized band, 60 meters a new
one, shared with government stations under a test for emergency comms in
places like Katrina. All the other ham bands are broad strokes of
frequencies you can operate anyplace in there you like. The radios have
10 or 100 Hz steps. Their master oscillators are cheaply made, not
temperature compensated much as there is no need. Most have a trimmer on
the outside of the radio so you can tweak it closer, yourself. Marine
radios have temperature-compensated crystal master oscillators accurate
to a standard. The M802 is:

Operating temp. range :
–30°C to +60°C; –22°F to +140°F
Guaranteed range : –20°C to +55°C; –4°F to +131°F
Frequency stability : ±10Hz (at –20°C to +55°C)

This exceeds the .005% of the FCC standard for type acceptance. Hell, 10
Hz is closer than the 20 Hz of an AM broadcast transmitter costing
thousands of times more. (Most AM transmitters, today, are within 1 Hz.
You rarely hear much of a beat note at night on frequencies you can hear
two or more stations transmitting on.)

M802 also exceeds other standards for unwanted emissions that cause
interference to other frequencies:

Output power : 150, 60, 20W PEP (Selectable)
Spurious emissions : –62dB
Unwanted sideband : 55dB
Carrier suppression : 40dB

Its design also keeps you on the right sideband, USB, and its computer
will not permit you to do technical things wrong users know nothing about
that any ham radio will easily do if you just bump a knob or press the
wrong button.

All this is designed so that operators with very limited or no knowledge
of radio transmitter operation can operate the marine HF radio without
causing undue interference to other services and users by technical
incompetence. It's why cop, business band, trunk radio and CB radios are
so simple...a minimal number of knobs to screw up. UNfortunately, M802
has way too many buttons and knobs for most of its owners to use. It
requires too much education the older SSB radios didn't need....Channel,
Volume, Squelch, PTT microphone are all they should have. Japanese pride
themselves in making anything they create into a technological wonder.
M802 should make them all very proud.

The other reason they don't make ham radios so stringent is
simple....money. You can see it in the difference in price between an
M802 type-accepted commercial radio and the Icom 706 ham rig. Few hams
will pay for a type-accepted commercial-grade radio. Hams are an awful
"cheap" lot. So, in response to the market...just like consumer
electronics everywhere...Kenmore, Yahoo and Icum make 'em as cheaply as
the market wants...just like that PoS TV in your living room.



When the 802 is enabled for ham (using the procedure you describe)
will it do both or do you have to toggle it back constantly ?

It will do both. But, make SURE you put it back to channelized transmit
before any Ship Inspections or you'll be busted. Pleasure boats are
pretty much immune from ship inspections, but, if you look at your ship
station licence from FCC, you'll notice they can come inspect your
installation at any time for compliance.

If I'm aboard, it's open so I can chat on 20 meters. If I'm not aboard,
being the only licensed ham, I switch it back so my captain doesn't try
to talk to BBC on 31 meters by mistake....one of his channels...(c;


You often hear that marine ssb's are difficult to use on ham, as they
are optimised for a fixed freq setting, and not for the more variable
freq used on ham. How big a problem i that ?

That is true of a lot of them. They are made to be channelized radios.
When Icom made the M802, some ham infiltrated the design team and had
them implement BOTH channelized operation, where the display shows you
what marine channel you are operating on...and...a beautiful frequency
display where the left knob chooses which digit to change with the right
knob, giving you coarse and fine frequency control, AND, made it so the
digit you're changing carries over when it switches anything from 9 to 0.
The right knob acts just like a ham VFO, in 100 Hz steps which is close
enough for hams. There's a little learning curve to switch the dials
between modes but once you learn how and use it it becomes second nature
very quickly. It's not a big problem at all on M802. The older and
cheaper radios don't have this feature making them useless...which is
what caused boaters to illegally use ham radios for marine radios in the
first place....that and PRICE.


Idont know you ham license structure, but where I live only the higest
license level are allowed to use more than 100w. Can the 802 be
configured to run only 100w on ham bands and 150w on marine bands ?

Yes. The M802 has 3 power levels simply adjusted by the front panel
buttons.
From the webpage:
http://www.icomamerica.com/products/...m802/specs.asp
Output power : 150, 60, 20W PEP (Selectable)

Another issue for your country is that I'm talking about USA type
acceptance and the FCC, Federal Communications Commission. Although our
government bureaucrats like to think they are omnipotent, they are not.
Your laws and radio regulations ARE different than our, but probably
accept FCC type acceptance as a matter of convenience. You may have more
lax laws than the USA. Check with your radio bureaucrats for guidance on
Marine installations. America has changed, recently. In the past, you
had to have a 2nd Class FCC commercial radio operator's license to
install and configure a marine radio. Owners were not allowed to do
anything to it but use it. Now, owners are allowed to install it as long
as the installation does not involve any adjustments to the factory-set,
type accepted internal settings. The computer and transistor broadband
amplifiers allowed this to happen as no radios require extensive tuning
like they used to back in the tube days. They're all plug n play.

I'm sure Danmark's radio bureaucrats have webpages about the laws,
regulations and requirements for your country.

Larry.

"Larry" wrote in message
...
Marine radios have temperature-compensated crystal master oscillators
accurate
to a standard.

Marine SSB's use an oven controlled crystal oscillator, not
temperature-compensated ones. Ham rigs that have a high stability oscillator
use the termperature-compenstated crystal oscillators.

When the 802 is enabled for ham (using the procedure you describe)
will it do both or do you have to toggle it back constantly ?

It will do both. But, make SURE you put it back to channelized transmit
before any Ship Inspections or you'll be busted.

There is no need to do this. It is perfectly legal to put the 802 in open
mode and use it on the ham bands. You do not void the warranty, the type
certification, or break any FCC rules by doing this.

You often hear that marine ssb's are difficult to use on ham, as they
are optimised for a fixed freq setting, and not for the more variable
freq used on ham. How big a problem i that ?

It's not a big problem at all on M802. The older and
cheaper radios don't have this feature making them useless...which is
what caused boaters to illegally use ham radios for marine radios in the
first place....that and PRICE.

You can also easily open up the M710 and M700pro SSB's to operate on the
ham bands and use the channel knob as a VFO control. As with the 802, you
can only change frequency in 100hz steps or greater and it operates as a
detented switch as opposed to the smooth rotary encoder of a ham rig.

Eric