I recently treated myself to a Uniden Bearcat USC230-E scanner -as I live in a coastal area with a busy port so there is still plenty on analogue radio to listen to. Its a very nice piece of kit and I will put more about it on the tech blog, but there is something I noticed in recent days I thought I’d better let everyone know about long before Spring/Summer as it could affect folks safety.
I set the radio to monitor VHF marine channels, and found that somewhere in my neighbourhood – it could be in my house, it could belong to a neighbour, is some equipment that interrferes with Channel 10 VHF and also 28. This also happens at night even when the bulk of the computer kit in my house is switched off, other than a router, the network switches and the computer which runs the telephone exchange, and two UPS units. In some cases the signal is strong enough to trigger the “close call” feature on the radio (which means it is fairly srong).
What is a concern is that Channel 10 is used by the UK Coastguard for transmitting navigation and other warnings – OK I am 1.6km inland so this is more a minor nuisance than a hazard – but the worst case is that this isn’t any of my kit but some new gadget that a neighbour has obtained (could be something as mundane as a digital tellly receiver or a media player or NAS), and one day they decide to move to somewhere nearer the sea, taking this device with them.
Already Ofcom and the Coastguard have had to deal with a Freeview box managing to send a Mayday alert through the telly antenna, thankfully as this occured around Coventry it was soon realised it wasn’t a ship in distress :wink:. Ironically because of the move to various kinds of digital radios, it means that this sort of interference is sometimes misinterpreted as a valid digital transmission especially by coastal authorities who tend not to take chances…
So if anyone here is planning on travelling on a small vessel or becomes lucky enough to own one, please check with the skipper before bringing any extra electronic kit on board (especially anything to do with computers or portable media players), or if you are the skipper, conduct suitable tests to make sure any equipment isn’t causing interference. Much land based equipment can’t be used above decks anyway as it is not robust enough to cope with the weather conditions found at sea…
