horns and hailers

[pcg]

My only experience with a boat horn is with one of those little handheld air horns which we carried in our 16' Skagit and never used. Now I'm in the process of restoring a 22' C-Dory and am trying to decide if I want a fog/hailer speaker or horn or both. I've purchased an ICOM IC-510BB VHF that has a hailer/fog horn feature that requires an external "hailer horn speaker", and is operated from the microphone. My understanding is that this allows you to talk over the speaker or send a fog horn sound over the speaker. The ICOM speaker is 40 watts. I know I can also buy a separate trumpet style air horn that would be operated by a button at the helm. Would love to hear folks' thoughts on the benfits of one over the other or both. I'll be operating in the PNW where fog is common. Thank you!

[ssobol]

A lot of hailers have a fog horn function that will sound the horn at regular intervals automatically vs. you having to keep time and manually sound it.

[B~C]

a hailer would be handy, especially on the Columbia. Better to have it and not use it than to need it and not have it.
I always dreamed of having a horn life a freighter...damn you could have some fun with the hog lines on a foggy day

[Peter & Judy]

I installed a fog horn/hailer when I upgraded my VHF to a Standard Horizon. I have used it both as a fog horn up in the Broughtons when I could hardly see the bow of the boat in the fog and it gave me some added piece of mind. It still was a scary situation and the combo of fog horn, chart plotter and radar made it less stressful. I have also used the hailer a few times when I needed some help docking and when there was a bunch of tourists hanging their legs over the dock exactly where I needed to dock. This allowed me to dock and saved the health care system the cost of multiple leg amputations.

I would also install a horn of some type, your marine store should have a selection of these.

[thataway]

Almost all of my boats had a Standard Horizon VHF/Loud hailer/fog horn. Certainly a fair number of features for the money. But they are not heard for much of a distance. The automatic timing is nice and almost important.

On the other hand, an air horn can have a solenoid programed to give the proper signals.

The air horns I had on my large cruising sailboat boat were about as loud as a train air horn. We would see people coming out of the cabins on some of the main Islands to see what type of giant vessel had that loud horn. Those horns were either mounted on the mizen mast or the aft Radar Arch which was 9 feet off the deck.

The horn is to be heard--I had one on one of my C Dorys! Take your earl plugs.

Bob

[Marco Flamingo]

Most of the hailers also feature a listening ability when the hailer isn't in use. Some of the fog horn programs also have this feature. After your horn blasts, it goes into listening mode. A nice feature in the fog, but beware that a diving bird running on the surface during takeoff sounds much like a boat approaching in the fog.

The other great thing about the listening feature is for fishing. Fishermen would never tell their lures/depths over the radio, but you can sometimes eavesdrop from 200 yards away. Good fun.

The last couple of hailer/horns that I've bought haven't been brand name (Standard Horizon, etc.). The brand X and unbranded versions seem to be the same thing at less than half the price. 8 ohm or 4 ohm might make a difference for your radio

[colbysmith]

[rogerbum]

I've used the Standard Horizon hailer/PA horn with my standard horizon radios. The only issue I've had is that this is that they don't seem to have much longevity. E.g. I need to replace the horn every 2-4 years. Does anyone (Bob??) have recommendations for one that will last longer? Ditto for the typical trumpet style boat horn. Any brands that last longer than others?

[thataway]

For the loud speaker/hailer, I have used the Horizon and Speco hailer horns, but the longevity is not sterling--as Roger finds.

The answer to the horn is of course Kahlenberg, if you want to depart with about $500 for the least expensive and a small compressor/tank.

The Sea Dog is fairly comparable to the one I used on one boat--and I don't remember the brand. That featured the compressor directly to the horn. Not quite as fast response as the tank and compressor, but adequate, and got away from the need for a tank on a sailboat. In the larger power boats I used a 5 gallon air tank and larger compressor, with horns like the Kahlenberg.

I have used "Hadley" on my RV's but those are close to the same price range of Kahlenberg.

[Dora~Jean]

Likewise, I got tired of replacing the dual horns every 1-2 years. It seemed that the “marine” horns were worse for longevity. You never hear of a car horn going out, so I ordered Hyundai dual horns, they’ve been on there 3-4 yrs now, so far I’m quite pleased.

[pcg]

Thanks all! Based on everyone's suggestions I ordered the ICOM 40W hailer/speaker ($67 on Amazon) so I can have the ability to hail should I feel the need, and hopefully the fog horn feature from the ICOM VHF wil be adequate when played though the speaker.

I also want to be able to quickly hit a horn button from the helm without having to go through a menu on the VHF radio so I ordered two 130dB horns (one low tone and one high tone) from Amazon for $23 for both. I've used these on motorcycles and they are very loud - much louder than a car horn. I've never had them fail and the longest I've owned a motorcycle with them on was 10 years. I do baby my motorcycles and they live indoors, but so will my boat.

And... if the ICOM hailer fog horn is not sufficiently loud, I may build a little circuit to make a horn button into a fog horn with repeating patterns, if someone hasn't already done it by then. I can't believe someone hasn't done it already, since the Fogmate is no longer available. I found the Signal Mate, but it's way to complex and expensive for what I need.

[pcg]