Rainy season?

Tatt av vinden
Bjørn Larsen
Sat 12 Mar 2016 13:56
We woke up this morning after a long nights sleep. Heavy rain. Just what was lacking! After a cup of coffee I got to the PC and the SSB radio. I wanted to use Airmail to get a weather forecast. Where we lye at anchor there is no wi-fi. So I used the short wave radio and the Pactor modem (Pactor 4 for those interested). I chose an area of interest in the graphical display in Airmail. Then I found a promising Sailmail frequency, also chosen from one of the windows in Airmail. I posted the request and pushed the send button. The contact with the radio station was almost immediate. Then I waited a few seconds and pushed the button again. This time to receive the forecast. It downloaded nice and fairly quick. This was done on around 13 MHz. That is short wave, and it was done over a distance of 1540 nautical miles.

You pay for the equipment, and you pay 250 US$ per year to use Sailmail radio stations, but the rest is free. Airmail is freeware, and your e-mails and downloading of weather forecasts are free. It is a lovely system, even if some will regard it old fashion in these satellite times.

Best of all: The weather forecast promise better weather from tomorrow morning. Very well! Because I was beginning to think the rainy season had come early this year.

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