Is my AIS transmitting?

[Draughty]

Hi all,
Interesting postscript to this years Sydney to Hobart race.
Line honours winner Wild Oats XI was belated protested by the Race Committee for not transmitting AIS during the race, after a statement (not protest) from another skipper. This protest was not surprisingly ruled invalid by the jury.
Whatever you think about racing/protests etc the skipper's explanation that they were transmitting all the time according to their AIS raises the question how do you know for sure. Mine is if just a green LED and no others is lit, according to the manual. I can also look at the diagnostics in proAIS2, but a nagging doubt can persist.

I would be interested to know what make and model this AIS is; maybe they should be recalled.
But given the skipper's earlier defence: "what's the problem, transmitting AIS is not mandatory" suggests otherwise; it was only made mandatory this year.

Rgds

[ozsailer]

G'day Draughty,
when out doing our shakedown cruise on the new boat everything looked honky dopey. We were picking up multiple targets in the marina and people were seeing us. Our VHF antenna is also the antenna with the cable going through a splitter for the AIS unit. When testing our VHF in port it was working fine as well
Offshore it was a different matter. We started to notice that the range for picking up vessels was substantially less than our old system and in conversation with fellow cruisers they advised they could not see us or we were fading in and out. It was the same with the VHF when offshore, very spotty reception.
On our MDF/chartplotter it appeared we could see AIS vessels and the AIS unit was indicating we were transmitting. This was not the case and ultimately we found two seperate issues. 1) I found a bad connection at the mast base. The connection was badly corroded which was reducing signal strength. 2) The other issue was a faulty AIS unit. Both replaced and now everythinboth AIS and VHF working as it should.
What amazed me was that the fault appeared to have been there for some time but the previous owner never picked up that there was a problem.


Greg H
Lagoon 440

[Don C L]

I don't have AIS yet, though it is at the top of my wish list, so take this with a grain of salt, but my MarineTraffic app on my phone picks up 4 or 5 boats in the harbor here who leave there AIS on all the time. Perhaps you could just turn it on and take a walk around the harbor and see if the local receiver is picking it up and sending it out via MarineTraffic, if you have that service there. Your local harbor patrol may have it as well and could confirm your signal with a radio check I bet.