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Ayama - SSB Love and Hate



Every day at 11:00 we all look forward to the World ARC fleet “roll call” using our SSB Radios transmitting on the 4, 6 or 8 MHz band. We use the ITU channels 4B, 6B and 8B
It is quite lonely on the ocean and we rarely see other boats in the fleet so it is great to hear each other’s voices and realizing that we are not alone out here and to know everything is OK!

We have designated net controller that have volunteered to manage the communications.
It goes like this:
Aretha, Juno!
Juno, Aretha!
Aretha, You are breaking up, but can you please tell us your position, wind speed and direction and how many engine hours you have, over!
Juno, our position is 10 degrees south, 129 degrees West, Wind 18 knots from the east, zero engine hours
Makena Makena, Juno!
Juno Makena.
Makena, if you could here Aretha can you please relay their position, as I could not copy them. Over.
Juno, Juno This is Makena; Please repeat, you are breaking up
Etc, Etc

After about 45 minutes most of our positions have been reported and we have all written them down on our forms so most of us have an idea where we all are.
The Net controllers are doing a heroic job keeping this going, it is not easy!
We are spread out over the Pacific Ocean and many of us can only hear some of the others, That’s unfortunately the way SSB works.

We have had our issues with our SSB installation. After moths of tinkering we can finally use it and it works, sometimes..
Mind you, on Ayama we have to turn off the fridge and freezer compressors as they disturb the SSB.
We also have to turn off the Autopilot as it goes bananas when we transmit on 8B.
The light in the toilet room also has o be turned off. (!)
We can download weather report with our fancy Pactor modem that is hooked up to the SS B if we manage to find a Station that can be reached and if that station answers, it can take up to an hour to get connected, and then the connection is not always stable, maybe it’s the sun spots that are extra active this time of the year?

Now we use the Sat phone for weather reports, it takes less than 2 minutes and always works..

When we get to next port Stefan is going to reroute the coax cable between the SSB transceiver and the tuner –maybe its the cable that somewhere is to close to the cables for the autopilot. It would be nice to be able to talk with the other boats without shutting down the AP

In the meantime you can always reach us on the Sat phone, it’s always turned on, always works and is as simple to use as a mobile phone –You don’t need to be certified and licensed to use it either ?


10 degrees South, 127 Degrees West /Stefan 20150318

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