Listening to Marine Radio

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Listening to Marine Radio

Solution Marine VHF radio is installed on all large ships and most motorized small craft. It is used for a wide variety of purposes, including summoning rescue services and communicating with harbours and marinas, and operates in the VHF frequency range, between 156 to 174 MHz.

Channel 16 (156.8 MHz) is the international calling and distress channel. Channel 9 can also be used in some places as a secondary call and distress channel.Transmission power ranges between 1 and 25 watts, giving a maximum range of up to about 60 nautical miles (111 km) between aerials mounted on tall ships and hills, and 5 nautical miles (9 km) between aerials mounted on small boats at sea-level.

You will see from this that you will need to get as high as possible to receive signals from any distance over about 5 miles. This is because VHF signals travel in straight lines and do not follow the curvature of the earth.

A list of frequencies is here:

http://www.merseyshipping.co.uk/minfo/marineradio/MarineFreq1.htm

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Article ID:	12
Category:	Radio Scanners
Date added:	2009-05-06 08:56:08
Views:	483
Rating (Votes):	(12)

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Listening to Marine Radio