vhf problem with happy ending

a few weeks ago i shipped my 2017 new to me Raymarine VHF to New Hampshire from California to install the new MMSI.
couple of hours of work and a 150 dollars later received unit and installed with MMSI and upgraded software.
today on maiden voyage, there was awful intermittent static on channel 16.
i was thinking "here we go again", take out radio , bundle it up, take to UPS, phone calls, emails, etc etc..
funny how we think catastrophic.
then i switched to channel 9 or channel 22.. no static.
I called USCG on channel and asked if they were having problems with channel 16.
Yup.. " dont know what it is, they said" an hour later, no static on 16

sometimes it pays to slow down

Yup, sometimes it does! We can all learn from this.

Open mic on 16. Happens a lot. We chased one down one day with an RDF when the guys at the CG station finally got tired of it. Found the offender by asking all the boats in the area if they'd noticed their VHF was beeping. One guy say yes, he was wondering why it was doing that! Had him turn it off, problem went away.