Warning! C-Dory electronics warning health hazard!!

[DayBreak]

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First trip I'm making in my new radar/radio setup will be to the Friday Harbor gathering so I can be schooled. :-0

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I notice that you plan on coming to the annual FH gathering in May, don't forget to sign-up. Looking forward to meeting you. Colleen and I use this information as coordinators and work with the Port for group reservations. Thanks. Gary and Colleen

http://www.c-brats.com/viewtopic.php?t=31980

[thataway]

'The Garmin 215 AIS/VHF radio is a receive only AIS. This does not transmit or give out any of your boats information. It uses NMEA 2000 protocol to send the information to your chart plotter. You do not need a spitter or special antenna. It functions just like a normal radio, but has a specific receiver section which downloads all of the information from other boats, then passes it along to your chart plotter. I have used a second smaller and older chart plotter for the AIS information. If you are boating on San Francisco Bay, you much see over 100 AIS targets. Some of the Yacht clubs are putting transmitters on the racing sailboats, as well as the Race Committee boats.

The one VHF antenna tuned to near channel 16 suffices for reception of AIS signals. This does not mean that the antenna you referenced will not work. It will, but may be not tuned or as "efficient" on the VHF Marine radio channel channel 16. There probably will be little difference noted on reception, and slightly more loss of signal on transmission.

Here is the US Coast Guard list of channels, and frequencies. I recommend that you download it and have it printed out.

There are 3 types of AIS transmitters: Class A AIS are mandated for vessels over 300 tons, fishing vessels over 15m, passenger carrying vessels and for SOLAS Convention. Many long distance cruising yachts also Type A, because it gets thru to the larger ships in difficult or crowded areas.

AIS Class B are for recreational craft installation and have a transmission power of 2W (range of about 10 miles).

AIS Class B+ (also called Class B SOTDMA) use the same SOTDMA technology as a AIS Class A transponders and therefore have the same priority when it comes to reserving a slot, thus ensuring that they will always be able to transmit, even in high traffic areas. They have a transmission power of 5W. This is the class I would choose, if putting a AIS on a boat I owned. It is only a couple of hundred dollars more than the AIS B. It will be shown, when an AIS B may be filtered out on larger ships.