Hello everyone,
Thank you in advance for reading. Have scrolled through the last 20 pages of the forum and not found anything quite specific to my issue, so I figured I'd give it a go here.
My situation is that I do the radio installations for a small boat rental company. We have 2 pontoon boats that are used for shuttling customers and moving equipment back and forth between our mainland site and an island about 1 km off shore.
We have marine VHF radios in both boats, but we operate a UHF system on the Low Power Industrial spectrum (450mHz), (programmed by a licensed radio retailer in our area with his licensed frequencies). Simplex operation, no repeater. We use the UHF system for communications between our office (point of sale), dock crew (who work on the mainland) and pontoon boats, due to marine VHF not being intended for land-based use (despite the half dozen businesses around us who do so illegally).
I'm looking for a solution to the problem of mounting radios on the pontoon boats (they are exposed to rain, waves, splashes, unruly workers, etc.).
Looking for any suggestions on how to mount radios on the boats in such a way that they won't get destroyed by the elements. So far, I have been using waterproof speaker/mics mounted on the steering console, connected to portables with battery eliminators (yes, with fuses) and external antennas. The portables keep getting destroyed by water entry through the antenna jack. (Vertex VX-160's, purchased used).
My next attempt was going to be to place the portables in waterproof electrical conduit boxes.
Anyone have any suggestions?
TL, DR: Any suggestions on mounting UHF radios on boats.
Thank you in advance for reading. Have scrolled through the last 20 pages of the forum and not found anything quite specific to my issue, so I figured I'd give it a go here.
My situation is that I do the radio installations for a small boat rental company. We have 2 pontoon boats that are used for shuttling customers and moving equipment back and forth between our mainland site and an island about 1 km off shore.
We have marine VHF radios in both boats, but we operate a UHF system on the Low Power Industrial spectrum (450mHz), (programmed by a licensed radio retailer in our area with his licensed frequencies). Simplex operation, no repeater. We use the UHF system for communications between our office (point of sale), dock crew (who work on the mainland) and pontoon boats, due to marine VHF not being intended for land-based use (despite the half dozen businesses around us who do so illegally).
I'm looking for a solution to the problem of mounting radios on the pontoon boats (they are exposed to rain, waves, splashes, unruly workers, etc.).
Looking for any suggestions on how to mount radios on the boats in such a way that they won't get destroyed by the elements. So far, I have been using waterproof speaker/mics mounted on the steering console, connected to portables with battery eliminators (yes, with fuses) and external antennas. The portables keep getting destroyed by water entry through the antenna jack. (Vertex VX-160's, purchased used).
My next attempt was going to be to place the portables in waterproof electrical conduit boxes.
Anyone have any suggestions?
TL, DR: Any suggestions on mounting UHF radios on boats.