In a message dated 5/29/07 10:32:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> So why did they all sound so different? Was is operator preference or > equipment limitations that determined the tone? > Whole bunch of reasons. For one thing, a marine radio's first priority is reliability. Lives may depend on whether or not the radio works - not just the lives of those on that particular ship, either. And unlike aircraft or landbased radio, repairs are limited to what you have on the ship. So the radio gear is way overbuilt by landlubber standards, and signal quality isn't the first concern. Another factor is that while the radio is a vital piece of equipment, ship owners aren't eager to replace and upgrade them too often. Part of the reason is the cost of new radio gear itself, but a bigger cost is that the ship isn't making money sitting tied to the dock getting a new radio set installed, checked out and approved. So they tended to use the same old radio sets as long as possible, meaning that rigs of many different vintages were on the air at the same time. Still another factor is that for many sets the signal quality was influenced by how the rig was tuned up. If you've got a ton of traffic to pass and the weather is getting bad, you may not spend a lot of time tuning the rig for an absolutely perfect T9X signal when T8C will get the message through just as well. That's just what I've been told by the old salts who actually did it. 73 de Jim, N2EY ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
