Thursday, Feb 12, 2004 at 22:19
Blokes, Here is a scenario that happened up a remote track somewhere off
the Tanami Track a while back. Fella holed his fuel tank, lost all his diesel. He had the gear to fix the hole, but no diesel to get him the 300 odd k's back to town. If he'd have had a satphone he could have made a couple of calls and some kind garage chappy would have loaded a couple of gerrys up and headed off to fix him up. Had that been the case, he was told later it would have set him back a grand or so.
In this case however, he had a HF. He radio'd the
Alice Springs Base to see what they may be able to do for him. It so happened that another VKS-737 member was listening in and it turned out he was only a few sand dunes (about 20klm) away and was carrying a bit of surplus fuel. He called
Alice Springs to let them know he was willing to assist and our mate was able to get fuel and get back to town for a few bucks and a carton of coldies.
With HF there are no "call charges" unless you NEED the radphone feature. Note that I spend most of the year with a phone glued to my lug-hole and I'm quite happy to be away from the phone for a few weeks. However, we all need to feel confident that we can be contacted if a relative back
home falls off the perch or something similar. VKS-737 has this situation covered too.........
Before you leave on your big trip, let your family and friends know the phone number they can ring to leave a message for you. Then, each afternoon, during the daily "skeds", the various Base Stations will start off their session by putting out a call to all mobile units for whom they have a message.
It really is quite good listening in to where people are each evening. You get to hear weather and road reports etc as
well. On my Barrett 550 set (with auto tune antenna), I have the capability to pick up many channels including Marine CB, AM CB channels, LSB CB, ABC stations at
Katherine,
Tennant Creek,
Alice Springs etc, Radio Australia plus numerous others.
In an ideal world I'd love to have both HF and Satphone, but given the choice of only one or the other, it's a not brainer that HF is the way to go. The annual
membership fee for VKS 737 is about $66-, which is your only outlay after you buy the radio. Re-sale value is very good too.
I bought my set from Outbacker Comms, back in 2001 for $2000-.
Please let me know if you want any further convincing......
Cheers,
Roachie
AnswerID:
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Follow Up By: Brad - Friday, Feb 13, 2004 at 07:09
Friday, Feb 13, 2004 at 07:09
Many thanks Roachie
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Follow Up By: PETER - Saturday, Feb 14, 2004 at 08:38
Saturday, Feb 14, 2004 at 08:38
Rochie i'm with you.
love vks and all the support they share with me .
on the radio everybody is a mate and "close by" .
great to share experiances without even speaking- just listening for a change.
in my case who the devil would i sat - phone to
check the track outside
Winton
victor 4868
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308570