Bruce and Karl,
Bob is looking into receiving weather fax transmissions. He will be one
of the radiomen for the second leg of the trip.
Bob has been reading about receiving and interpreting weather faxes, and
asked last night what kind of weather fax we will have onboard, I told
him that we intend to use an SSB, a laptop and software. I pointed him
to the weather fax 2000 software, and the freeware.
Bob, It occurred to me last night that with two PCs, you could begin
experimenting with receiving weather faxes using a web-controlled SSB
radio, like http://www.ralabs.com/webradio/ . You can go to this site,
or one like it, and remotely control someone's HAM radio (which receive
marine SSB frequencies). If you took the audio out jack from the PC
acting as your SSB, and plugged it into the PC with the weather fax
software running on it, we should be able to get our first faxes.
Bob, notice that the SSB antenna is in New York, so we need to listen
for the weather fax broadcasts from USCG Group Boston.
(http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/fax/PLAZ01.gif ) Schedules are in Universal
Time Code (UTC). I think we are in UTC - 4 hours. (see www.time.gov)
Bob, Karl is borrowing a SSB receiver from Walter Sidor, who will be
crew on the Padanaram - Bermuda leg, so we will use that to practice
here.
Walter Piescik
BA Practice Team
617 563 9094
