marine band with a scanner

[tommyscan]

I dont know about anyone else,but I have noticed that even though I live on the south shore of long island that 156.800 ch16 seems very scratchy and low in audio and many port channels are silent or so low you cant make out the audio??!! Any way of helping reception or are scanners poor monitors of this band segment?? A marine radio dedicated to this area may do better???

[Don_Burke]

Originally Posted by tommyscan

I dont know about anyone else,but I have noticed that even though I live on the south shore of long island that 156.800 ch16 seems very scratchy and low in audio and many port channels are silent or so low you cant make out the audio??!! Any way of helping reception or are scanners poor monitors of this band segment?? A marine radio dedicated to this area may do better???

A better antenna or feedline or both would help.

Using a marine radio would probably give considerably better performance.

[petey_racer]

I live on a hill 1/2 mile as the crow flies from the Hudson River upstate. I hear tons of traffic in the summer on both my scanners and marine HTs.
I do have a Diamond discone in the attic for my scanners, but my marine HTs in the house work almost as good.

[N9NRA]

I get up to the north of this state (WI) from time to time, and would be able to monitor the marine traffic on Lake Superior, but i need the channels/freqs for the marine band, could some mabey pm me with those? I would really appreicate it ! Thanks! N9NRA

[kb2vxa]

Tommy, the South Shore is 120 miles long and the Atlantic is a big ocean so it just may be there isn't a whole lot of radio traffic in your area. Like the man said you may need a better antenna and coax to grab more signal but never forget that height is might and boat antennas are not mounted more than 30' above the water at most. That gives you a rather close in radio horizon looking out to sea so don't expect more than a few miles at best. If you're on the western end I'd say you have a problem but if you're down east... oh well, there just ain't a whole lot to listen to.

For what it's worth at the present time all I have for my scanner is an 800MHz cell phone antenna so my reception frankly sux. Oh lucky me, I live at the mouth of the Manasquan River with a Coast Guard station right up the street so there is a whole lot of radio traffic especially in summer when they're pretty busy fishing the weekend warriors out of the drink. The other day it was hilarious when one fell overboard leaving the inlet and his boat continued out to sea with no one aboard. Not to get too far off track I can hear fairly well offshore a few miles and across the water when conditions are right to Group New York and Group Long Island Sound but Sandy Hook is around the bend behind Telegraph Hill in Holmdel and the whole of Raritan Bay and New York Harbor are in shadow. There are some decent hills on Long Island so maybe one casts a shadow on you?

One last thing, being the transition to NFM is complete with the possible exception of a few old boat radios out there setting your scanner's mode appropriately should help dig the audio out of the noise. I have noticed the USCG has considerably lower audio than the average boat which tells me they have changed over. Frankly I have reset everything except the AM channels to NFM and just let it ride, they all sound good now.

[Don_Burke]

Originally Posted by N9NRA

I get up to the north of this state (WI) from time to time, and would be able to monitor the marine traffic on Lake Superior, but i need the channels/freqs for the marine band, could some mabey pm me with those? I would really appreicate it ! Thanks! N9NRA

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Marine