If I had a P19 I think I would want a mounted radio with a masthead
antenna. If I ever find myself in the water with my P14 turtled, a
submersible handheld could be a good thing to have, although the range from
water level might be pretty limited.
West Marine is including, with any VHF radio, a free year's subscription to
the Maritel ship-to-shore service, worth $79. It would be nice to be able
to call home from the boat, since I don't have a cellular phone. The
service is presently available only in certain areas. I think the East
Coast and much of the West Coast are covered.
Harry
P14 #234, Manatee
Mountain View, CA
Eric Johnson wrote:
>I have a Standard HX150S. Its inexpensive. I like it, seems to work fine.
>The battery tray has a nice feature - you can pull out the nicad pattery
>pack and put in alkaline AA cells if you need to, and since alkalines store
>well, you can always have a backup power supply ready to go. It has a 120v
>charger. I think a 12V charger is available. The system will run without
>batteries on just the charger, but the manual says you're not supposed to. I
>suspect it wouldn't transmit very well. But i woulnd't know - I dont think
>I've ever transmitted with mine. It seems to be reasonably water-resistant.
>Overall its hard to beat for the money - they've come down quite a bit in
>the couple years since I bought mine. I store mine in a little beckson white
>poly holder screwed to my companionway steps.
>
>One thing I dislike about it is that standard has used some proprietary
>antenna connector, which is basically a screw-on thing. I wish they had used
>BNC or TNC some other connector type (like they do on their more expensive
>models) so I could experiment with a mast-mounted antenna. I might just buy
>another duck antenna for it, take it apart, and build an adaptor from it. I
>emailed Standard about it some time ago and they don't have an adaptor
>available, but they did confirm the unit expects a standard 50ohm antenna.