CR CRUISER
Seaman
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2009
- Messages
- 64
I used to work for an aluminum boat manufacturer doing the rigging and electrical on the new boats. A customer brought in his 6 month old boat to have some additional equipment added and to have a wierd electrical problem looked into. He claimed that whenever he keyed the VHF mic, the anchor light would come on. I looked at him and said "Ya right!". He took me out to the boat and sure enough, when he keyed the mic on any channel, the anchor light lit up. The VHF was transmitting and receiving fine and the anchor light was working properly from the switch. Nothing else was being affected except the anchor light.
I got paid by the hour and enjoyed a good challenge so I had to find out what was causing this. My first thought was that somebody had put a screw through the anchor light and antenna cables. I checked every inch of both and there was no damage at all. The only common denominators were that the VHF and anchor light both got power from the same fuse panel and and ground buss and the antenna and light were both mounted on the radar mast.
So I'm laying under the instrument panel with meters and test lights trying to figure this out. I've got the VHF set on a seldom used pleasure boat frequency and I'm keying the mic and watching the meters. At some point I hung up the mic on its clip and didn't realize that this radio had a feature that switched the channel to 16 whenever you hung up the mic. I'm deep in thought trying to determine why this is happening and grab the mic off of its clip. I keyed it again and sure enough even with its fuse pulled, the anchor light lit up. I guess that I muttered to myself "What the **** is going on here". Almost immediately a voice out of the radio answered "The station using profanity on VHF16, This is Coast Guard Radio. Identify yourself immediately." OOPS! I might have been somewhat confused but I wasn't stupid enough to confess and turned the radio off.
Having not been able to figure out the cause of the problem, I reverted to the mechanic's last resort, just start replacing parts until the issue is resolved. The first one replaced was the antenna, just the antenna as the cable attached directly to its base. And Voila! the problem was fixed. Nobody has since been able to determine why this was happening and I actually used this same antenna on my own boat for 6 years without any issues.
I got paid by the hour and enjoyed a good challenge so I had to find out what was causing this. My first thought was that somebody had put a screw through the anchor light and antenna cables. I checked every inch of both and there was no damage at all. The only common denominators were that the VHF and anchor light both got power from the same fuse panel and and ground buss and the antenna and light were both mounted on the radar mast.
So I'm laying under the instrument panel with meters and test lights trying to figure this out. I've got the VHF set on a seldom used pleasure boat frequency and I'm keying the mic and watching the meters. At some point I hung up the mic on its clip and didn't realize that this radio had a feature that switched the channel to 16 whenever you hung up the mic. I'm deep in thought trying to determine why this is happening and grab the mic off of its clip. I keyed it again and sure enough even with its fuse pulled, the anchor light lit up. I guess that I muttered to myself "What the **** is going on here". Almost immediately a voice out of the radio answered "The station using profanity on VHF16, This is Coast Guard Radio. Identify yourself immediately." OOPS! I might have been somewhat confused but I wasn't stupid enough to confess and turned the radio off.
Having not been able to figure out the cause of the problem, I reverted to the mechanic's last resort, just start replacing parts until the issue is resolved. The first one replaced was the antenna, just the antenna as the cable attached directly to its base. And Voila! the problem was fixed. Nobody has since been able to determine why this was happening and I actually used this same antenna on my own boat for 6 years without any issues.
