Afisherman
08-12-2010, 06:17 AM
I recently bought and installed a new vhf on my boat. The overall antenna height is maybe 8ft. above water level. I'm having trouble being able to transmit. I can receive , from a good distance away, but when I try to respond, they cannot hear me. Has anyone had this issue? I assume its within the installation of the antenna to the back of the vhf, but I'm not sure. The antenna is already mounted as high as it can go on the boat.
Thanks,
Alex.
many problems with being unable to transmit on a VHF can be traced back to bad or poor connections, it takes very little current to receive but when you key the mike it takes a full 25 wats to transmit,,check & recheck your power connections
gary49
08-14-2010, 07:42 AM
Antenna connections can be a factor as well, check that. I don't like the setscew connectors for the co-ax, would rather have the solder type, although the set-screw types generally work at first, I think they are more susceptible to corrosion. If you can find somebody with a signal strength meter, that will tell the tale of whether you are transmitting. It could be a bad radio, too. The transmit and receive functions are separate in the radio, I have had an old radio's transmit section fail while the receive part still worked. If you have or know someone with a handheld VHF, you can try transmitting to that to see if you have anything going on, just make sure you get away from the boat a bit, the signal is tranmitted in pretty close to flat plane, so if the handheld is too close by, the signal from your boat will go right over it's antenna.