High Wire
Guru
Thumbs up for the emergency button as long as its properly interfaced. I also get frustrated to have the distress alarm go off only to find the distress boat is over a hundred miles away.
The ability to call a vessel shown on the AIS display sounds good but Ive never had the need yet.
The non-emergency DSC calling is of little value to me. Because I rarely use it, I need the manual to initate a call and so does the reciever. You can only pre-program a handful of boat MMSI numbers ahead of time. My friends know that if you want to call me, I'm listening on CH 16 or 78. To me its like using a SAT phone to call someone 2 miles away in the back bay. Way overkill. Now if you could call and talk to DSC boats out of your normal VHF range in a non-emergency mode without alerting the whole region, that would have value.
The ability to call a vessel shown on the AIS display sounds good but Ive never had the need yet.
The non-emergency DSC calling is of little value to me. Because I rarely use it, I need the manual to initate a call and so does the reciever. You can only pre-program a handful of boat MMSI numbers ahead of time. My friends know that if you want to call me, I'm listening on CH 16 or 78. To me its like using a SAT phone to call someone 2 miles away in the back bay. Way overkill. Now if you could call and talk to DSC boats out of your normal VHF range in a non-emergency mode without alerting the whole region, that would have value.
