mattkab
Senior Member
I'm actually quite embarrassed. Not that I solved this problem, but embarrassed by the root cause. I wanted to share because someone else may benefit from it.
I received a new VHF radio for Christmas, a Standard Horizon GX2200. It's a really nice VHF radio with integrated GPS and AIS receivers, as well as NMEA output so that I can connect it to my OpenCPN chart plotter and get position reports of both my boat as well as AIS transmitting vessels. I programmed my MMSI, and my dinghy's MMSI into it, so DSC works well too. Almost everything worked perfectly out of the box.
The problem is that I couldn't get it to transmit voice. I would key the mic, and I could see the TX light on the display. I could sometimes hear transmissions if we were right next to the boat, but sending my daughter with a handheld to the marina parking lot a few hundred yards away proved that the signal wasn't strong at all. Reception was perfect though.
Thinking it may have been the antenna, coax cables, or connectors, I purchased a basic SWR meter from Amazon, watched a few youtube videos on how to use it, and proved that my antenna signal strength was pretty close to ideal. After a few phone calls with Standard Horizon's tech support to no avail, and with no other options, I sent the radio back to Standard Horizon to get checked out. They looked into it, found one small loose diode, but otherwise the radio was set to spec, and they have sent it back.
<Spoiler alert, solution below>
This weekend we went on our first trip of the year, and in preparation I was cleaning the flybrige when I noticed something.... I had lowered all of our antennas at the end of the season last year to protect them from the winter storms, and I hadn't raised them back up again! I found an image on offshoreblue.com that shows the radiation pattern from a standard VHF antenna, and you can see why all the symptoms happen -- close to the boat, you are within the "donut", but the signal wouldn't transmit to shore (straight astern) from our slip. I would bet that had we walked a half-mile directly port or starboard we would have been able to receive just fine. I called back Standard Horizon and told them what happened, and after a decent laugh by both of us, they have added this check to their support list.
So... lesson learned... unless you are trying to communicate with the moon or with the fishes, raise your antenna.
I received a new VHF radio for Christmas, a Standard Horizon GX2200. It's a really nice VHF radio with integrated GPS and AIS receivers, as well as NMEA output so that I can connect it to my OpenCPN chart plotter and get position reports of both my boat as well as AIS transmitting vessels. I programmed my MMSI, and my dinghy's MMSI into it, so DSC works well too. Almost everything worked perfectly out of the box.
The problem is that I couldn't get it to transmit voice. I would key the mic, and I could see the TX light on the display. I could sometimes hear transmissions if we were right next to the boat, but sending my daughter with a handheld to the marina parking lot a few hundred yards away proved that the signal wasn't strong at all. Reception was perfect though.
Thinking it may have been the antenna, coax cables, or connectors, I purchased a basic SWR meter from Amazon, watched a few youtube videos on how to use it, and proved that my antenna signal strength was pretty close to ideal. After a few phone calls with Standard Horizon's tech support to no avail, and with no other options, I sent the radio back to Standard Horizon to get checked out. They looked into it, found one small loose diode, but otherwise the radio was set to spec, and they have sent it back.
<Spoiler alert, solution below>
This weekend we went on our first trip of the year, and in preparation I was cleaning the flybrige when I noticed something.... I had lowered all of our antennas at the end of the season last year to protect them from the winter storms, and I hadn't raised them back up again! I found an image on offshoreblue.com that shows the radiation pattern from a standard VHF antenna, and you can see why all the symptoms happen -- close to the boat, you are within the "donut", but the signal wouldn't transmit to shore (straight astern) from our slip. I would bet that had we walked a half-mile directly port or starboard we would have been able to receive just fine. I called back Standard Horizon and told them what happened, and after a decent laugh by both of us, they have added this check to their support list.
So... lesson learned... unless you are trying to communicate with the moon or with the fishes, raise your antenna.