DSC Radios

[1mainiac]

I am starting a thread on DSC and will begin with a few Icom videos.

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4328799/11624852

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4342208

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4372485/11731873

The purpose of this is to inform everyone on some of the cool features we have in these new radios. I know the first thing I will hear is that it is not up and running yet. Well the answer is it is not fully functional yet however I have been told by personal at Muskegon Coast Guard Sta that pushing the red button will get a response. Secondly if the rest of us set up our radios we will all also receive the call. For this year I will be using the DSC setup and would hope others will join me. For those running events or for groups of boaters who want to keep in contact you can apply for a group number most radios can store up to 10 or more group numbers so we can make a group call to all who have it setup and and with a couple of button pushs have the entire group move to a secondary channel and talk without bothering anyone else. If we all have position request enabled we can check and see where each other is without saying a word on the air. In the event of a distress call everyone with DSC working would receive the call and location of the vessel and possibly the nature of the distress. If connected to you plotter the position will show up as a waypoint on your screen. The MMSI number you receive to program into your radio is like a cell phone number so if we share the numbers with each other we can make direct calls to each other much like a cell phone I can enter your number and select a talk channel hit call and your radio will beep to let you know I am calling you you hit receive to accept the call and both of our radios switch to the talk ch where we can have a semi private chat since we did not announce to anyone that we were changing ch on the air. if we use the voice scrambler we can have a completly private call but that costs more money for the scrambler and radio that can use one. If you choose not to accept the call it will be stored in memory as a missed call and you can call me back when you get a chance. Any how something to think about for the upcoming season.

[Priority1]

This is all very neat stuff. I should update my 15 yo GPS Sonar combo and my 5 yo ICOM VHF Radio. I'll also put in a plug for the ICOM brand of VHF transceivers. The CG will not specify any brand names, but I know for a fact, ICOM is what they use.

[1mainiac]

I Have 2 Icom ham radios and will be upgrading the boat to one as soon as I can afford it. I really want a 504 with the voice scrambler chip in it. But out of my price range at the moment. My current radio has DSC but limited features I would really like to get a few groups together. It would be nice to be able to call the person you want to talk to without calling everyone on the air at the same time. Another neat feature would be for tournament groups to apply for a group number for the event and give everyone the number to add to their radio then the directors could call the entire group and get a response from every one at the same time. They could also do ramdom position requests to see if anyone was fishing out of bounds.