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hi everyone

jeff cote here with boatingtechtalk.com

we are doing a box opening

and what we have in front of me is a vhf

fix mounted gps a radio but here's the

kick

this vhf radio also comes in with a gps

gps you say yes now of course

the radio can't be put into an aluminum

or

metal bow deep into the bowels of a boat

because as we know gps signals

don't go through metal but if you've got

a boat that is relatively open and if

this could be even a sailboat because i

have this radio actually on my sailboat

you could actually have this vhf radio

and you know gps signals do go through

a reasonable amount of fiberglass so

again

not to say that it's going to work in

all situations but for a lot of us

it's really handy to be able to have a

gps

signal to a vhf radio and why

well because if you have a gps signal

tied into your vhf radio which

this vhf rio does it's built in

and allows you to when you press the dsc

button on the radio and we're going to

look at that it gives whoever is

listening the coast guard

know where your boat location is so

instead of having to tell them

everything about where you are and

describing where you are which is really

hard on the water

they know exactly your coordinates both

loud and long

that's great and it's going to make

finding you in the event of a distress

much easier hence why we are big fans of

having

gps connectivity or signals coming to a

vhf rating so with that we're going to

get started

by the way this is what i would consider

a compact

vhf radio so it doesn't take too much

space on wherever you're going to mount

it

the other thing too that it does which

is kind of neat it gives you the ability

of having a remote mic

icon makes a remote mic for this so you

could actually have this for example on

a sailboat

at the chart table and you could

literally have a remote mic

that operates this vhf radio from

your uh help same thing on power boats

you could actually have this radio maybe

on the fly bridge and you could have a

remote mic

down below so you can have one vhf radio

that is operated from two different

areas

so that's pretty cool so with that we're

gonna get started

okay the box showed it as black but you

can also get it as white

we did a boat recently where the owner

was wanting to have a white one there's

a preference some of us like black some

of us like

white no harm there makes sense so you

can actually get

those choices all right so here it is

so this radio even though the back or

the cover

shows us as a black here is a white

model

so a little bit more yachty right um

some of us have

uh boating consoles where there's a lot

of white and we're not looking for

contrast so this is a good choice

and as i take this open i'm going to

take this out

and then i'm going to put it off to the

side you'll notice there's also a manual

of course inside and you got to read the

manual

vhf radios seem simple but you're not

going to be born

with knowing all this information

there's certain features that we always

find that aren't enabled

or done properly on vhf so let me put

off this to the side

and let me talk about this vhf radio a

little bit more

so it comes with a sort of a trunnion or

bracket mounting bracket

so if you want to install this radio uh

on a dash and have it sort of be able to

again sort of maybe tilt like this um

it comes with a bracket if you choose to

have

this radio flush mounted icon makes

optional sort of mounting kits that go

on either side

and i did that on my own boat where it

allows basically

you put it into the cutout and then to

make sure it doesn't come out you have

these sort of little

i guess adapters that go on the side

that make sure that the radio can't move

in and out of the hole

a little bit like what some of us are

doing with car stereo decks so that's an

option it doesn't come with this box but

if you want

they're about 30 u.s maybe a little bit

less or more

canada obviously it's a little bit more

money but again it

makes sense if you're going to have this

flush mounted you're going to need to

buy that optional part

from icom okay

let's have a look a little bit at what's

happening here at the back

first of all good thing to think about

never

ever ever power a vhf radio

without having the antenna connected to

it so

make sure that before you start turning

this radio on and you start playing with

the transmission of this radio

that there is an antenna connected okay

that's really important

this little adapter here at the back is

how you would actually connect the hm195

so this is the remote mic station that

allows you to have basically a vhf

radio interface either at this radio or

a remote helm

via the remote mic again that's a

product that icom has sold

for quite a long time i even when i

bought my boat 15 years ago

there were radios that had these sort of

remote mics they've been evolving over

time of course

but it's a concept that's been out for a

while you're going to have

the ability also and this is a great

thing with

the icom radio it's got this

bi-directional active

noise cancellation so it helps reduce a

background noise which is great

it's got a 10 watt loud audio but you

could also have

an external speaker if you wanted of

course it's enemy a0183

it's a class d dsc functionality

comes in black and white and you could

also connect that speaker that speaker

in case you're

curious is called the hm so hotel mic

um 205 bravo okay

now the cool thing again is this is this

little i

right here at the top so i'm gonna give

a good shot from the top this is where

it says

the gps right this is great

a lot of us have ehf radios on our boat

but honestly

interconnecting over zer183 a

vhf radio to a gps signal is sadly

rarely done you know we get invited on

hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of

boats a year

and i can tell you when we're doing

electrical audits or surveys of boats

probably less than it's sad

maybe only 10 percent or 15 of us have a

gps signal

and think about how important it is with

a phone

being able to know where you are that

was one of the big hurdles

for mobility was what happens when you

press 9-1-1 how do they know where you

are because obviously our landlines

they know where we are but how do they

know where to come in

come and save me well where's where are

you so having a gps signal be fed

into your vhf radio is essential and

this effectively bypasses the whole

hassle there's a gps receiver built in

so this is the

dsc distress signal call that again

would be enhanced

because now they would not only know

that you have a problem but they would

know where you

are that you have a problem so a big fan

of this radio again comes in black and

white

it's compact it's going to have the same

sort of cutout that most vhf radios are

going to have so it's easily

interchangeable

a great product by icom big fan of the

product line we've deployed icoms

thousands of times on boats that's the

radio i have on my boat

they know what they're doing and i

encourage you to look into it and see if

it's the right fit for you

thanks for watching

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