A Friend that keeps his boat at my dock came over and was checking the VHF Radio on his boat. Over the last few months it started to act up. He found that corrosion had made the antenna connection bad and the internal speaker so it did not work. He was going to try cleaning up contacts and re soldering some contacts to see if he could get it working.
He ask if I had any good deals on VHF's and what I could suggest. He seldom goes any place where he needs a VHF. The bridges and locks all near us have Cell Phone #s posted on them. My suggestion was get a small hand head VHF that was waterproof and floated and use his poorly working VHS as his back up.
He likes the distance advantage of the mast mount antenna though. With a hand held line of sight is all the distance you can get with a hand held. I said we could make a pigtail that he could hook a hand held to the mast antenna if he wanted to get the advantage of the taller antenna. I did give him prices on some VHF units though.
I then decided to check my own VHF...it worked. I had to admit it was also in sad shape from lack of use. I can not remember when I used it last. I just use my cell phone and hand held these days. If I was going to run up the coast or get off shore I would want the old VHF, but for the sailing I do these days the hand held and cell do just fine.
I took my old VHF out of its bracket and caped the antenna line off to keep the moisture out and took it home to clean up. I will clean it up and zip lock bag it to keep it ready if I want to use it this summer. Or maybe sell it to my friend. Better yet, sell him a new hand held we can share my working cleaned up VHF if either of us go on a trip that needs the bigger unit. 8-) It will be bagged and ready to go...just plug it in.
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