The DSC antenna is for the SSB radio and allows ship to ship reception that is independent of the HF antenna. That will allow another boat to hail us in an emergency even while the SSB is in use gathering weather data or whatever. I should note that last week’s practice cruise marked the first time the SSB radio has successfully been used to download a weather file. It was nice to have open access to the skies for the trial. At her home slip in Lake Union she is in close proximity to the Ship Canal bridge and closed in by land, so transmission has been less successful. I discovered some issues with the Bluetooth connection between my Laptop and the Pactor modem, but I seem to have those sorted out. I have a PC session running on my Mac so Windows is behaving a little differently than I’m used to running Windows from a PC. By necessity, things like Bluetooth and Internet connectivity have to be tied in to the hosts (Mac’s) operating system.
The Iridium transceiver requires an external antenna and the new solar panels each have power and ground wires that will connect to charge controllers, so all these new wires have to make their way from inside the cabin to up on the back deck. Getting those wires routed and passed through to the deck in a way that doesn’t make the boat leak is the present challenge. I hate drilling holes in my boat! One reason for taking care of all this at once is that I can at least consider using the same holes for multiple purposes. Of course that means bigger holes.
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