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hi everyone
jeff cote here with boatingtechtalk.com
we are doing a box opening
and what we have in front of me is a vhf
fix mounted gps a radio but here's the
kick
this vhf radio also comes in with a gps
gps you say yes now of course
the radio can't be put into an aluminum
or
metal bow deep into the bowels of a boat
because as we know gps signals
don't go through metal but if you've got
a boat that is relatively open and if
this could be even a sailboat because i
have this radio actually on my sailboat
you could actually have this vhf radio
and you know gps signals do go through
a reasonable amount of fiberglass so
again
not to say that it's going to work in
all situations but for a lot of us
it's really handy to be able to have a
gps
signal to a vhf radio and why
well because if you have a gps signal
tied into your vhf radio which
this vhf rio does it's built in
and allows you to when you press the dsc
button on the radio and we're going to
look at that it gives whoever is
listening the coast guard
know where your boat location is so
instead of having to tell them
everything about where you are and
describing where you are which is really
hard on the water
they know exactly your coordinates both
loud and long
that's great and it's going to make
finding you in the event of a distress
much easier hence why we are big fans of
having
gps connectivity or signals coming to a
vhf rating so with that we're going to
get started
by the way this is what i would consider
a compact
vhf radio so it doesn't take too much
space on wherever you're going to mount
it
the other thing too that it does which
is kind of neat it gives you the ability
of having a remote mic
icon makes a remote mic for this so you
could actually have this for example on
a sailboat
at the chart table and you could
literally have a remote mic
that operates this vhf radio from
your uh help same thing on power boats
you could actually have this radio maybe
on the fly bridge and you could have a
remote mic
down below so you can have one vhf radio
that is operated from two different
areas
so that's pretty cool so with that we're
gonna get started
okay the box showed it as black but you
can also get it as white
we did a boat recently where the owner
was wanting to have a white one there's
a preference some of us like black some
of us like
white no harm there makes sense so you
can actually get
those choices all right so here it is
so this radio even though the back or
the cover
shows us as a black here is a white
model
so a little bit more yachty right um
some of us have
uh boating consoles where there's a lot
of white and we're not looking for
contrast so this is a good choice
and as i take this open i'm going to
take this out
and then i'm going to put it off to the
side you'll notice there's also a manual
of course inside and you got to read the
manual
vhf radios seem simple but you're not
going to be born
with knowing all this information
there's certain features that we always
find that aren't enabled
or done properly on vhf so let me put
off this to the side
and let me talk about this vhf radio a
little bit more
so it comes with a sort of a trunnion or
bracket mounting bracket
so if you want to install this radio uh
on a dash and have it sort of be able to
again sort of maybe tilt like this um
it comes with a bracket if you choose to
have
this radio flush mounted icon makes
optional sort of mounting kits that go
on either side
and i did that on my own boat where it
allows basically
you put it into the cutout and then to
make sure it doesn't come out you have
these sort of little
i guess adapters that go on the side
that make sure that the radio can't move
in and out of the hole
a little bit like what some of us are
doing with car stereo decks so that's an
option it doesn't come with this box but
if you want
they're about 30 u.s maybe a little bit
less or more
canada obviously it's a little bit more
money but again it
makes sense if you're going to have this
flush mounted you're going to need to
buy that optional part
from icom okay
let's have a look a little bit at what's
happening here at the back
first of all good thing to think about
never
ever ever power a vhf radio
without having the antenna connected to
it so
make sure that before you start turning
this radio on and you start playing with
the transmission of this radio
that there is an antenna connected okay
that's really important
this little adapter here at the back is
how you would actually connect the hm195
so this is the remote mic station that
allows you to have basically a vhf
radio interface either at this radio or
a remote helm
via the remote mic again that's a
product that icom has sold
for quite a long time i even when i
bought my boat 15 years ago
there were radios that had these sort of
remote mics they've been evolving over
time of course
but it's a concept that's been out for a
while you're going to have
the ability also and this is a great
thing with
the icom radio it's got this
bi-directional active
noise cancellation so it helps reduce a
background noise which is great
it's got a 10 watt loud audio but you
could also have
an external speaker if you wanted of
course it's enemy a0183
it's a class d dsc functionality
comes in black and white and you could
also connect that speaker that speaker
in case you're
curious is called the hm so hotel mic
um 205 bravo okay
now the cool thing again is this is this
little i
right here at the top so i'm gonna give
a good shot from the top this is where
it says
the gps right this is great
a lot of us have ehf radios on our boat
but honestly
interconnecting over zer183 a
vhf radio to a gps signal is sadly
rarely done you know we get invited on
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
boats a year
and i can tell you when we're doing
electrical audits or surveys of boats
probably less than it's sad
maybe only 10 percent or 15 of us have a
gps signal
and think about how important it is with
a phone
being able to know where you are that
was one of the big hurdles
for mobility was what happens when you
press 9-1-1 how do they know where you
are because obviously our landlines
they know where we are but how do they
know where to come in
come and save me well where's where are
you so having a gps signal be fed
into your vhf radio is essential and
this effectively bypasses the whole
hassle there's a gps receiver built in
so this is the
dsc distress signal call that again
would be enhanced
because now they would not only know
that you have a problem but they would
know where you
are that you have a problem so a big fan
of this radio again comes in black and
white
it's compact it's going to have the same
sort of cutout that most vhf radios are
going to have so it's easily
interchangeable
a great product by icom big fan of the
product line we've deployed icoms
thousands of times on boats that's the
radio i have on my boat
they know what they're doing and i
encourage you to look into it and see if
it's the right fit for you
thanks for watching
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