BoatsExplained.com - Weatherfax:WHAT WHERE AND WHEN

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BETWEEN the UK and The Mediterranean, the most important wx info stations are The Met Office at Bracknell, the RN at Northwood, and Deutscher Wetterdienst at Hamburg (ex Offenbach).
Most serious users seem to rely almost totally on the latter, not only because everyone seems to experience problems with the UK pair, but also because the German info (amongst the guff) is extremely compre¬hensive. Like all wx stations, Hamburg transmits on several wavebands simultaneously, so no matter what the radio 'wave skip' dis¬tance, the boat should be able to access one of the frequencies suffi¬ciently clearly. Naturally, proper selec¬tion according to conditions and loca¬tion is essential for good reception. [see info box] Our own schedule is typical of many of the skippers with whom we regu¬larly discuss radio weather. If I know I'm not going far for a few days, I'm content to rely on the 14.303 net and local forecasts, rather than connect up the computer, cables etc.
However, if we're away from civili¬sation, or planning an open sea cross¬ing, or if the weather pattern suggests the need for a totally safe refuge, we like to have our own forecast, which can be studied in detail. That's why I take the charts, beginning at 0730, for surface pressure at current time, followed by those for +24 hrs, +48 hrs, +72 hrs, +96 hrs ahead. This 5 day computer prediction of where the highs and lows and fronts are moving, forms the basis of our overall strategy.
During the afternoon, I record the 3/5 day RTTY forecast. This is a super and much under publicised progno¬sis, covering just about every sea area in turn. In the UK, each segment from Lands End to the Baltic is covered separately, by transmissions starting from about 1200 GMT. In The Med, the text begins scrolling in at 1600 GMT. For each midnight and noon, it gives prognoses of: wind direction, wind force, anticipated gusts and wave height, viz and weather.
Amateurs V Pros
Even though we all like to have our two pennyworth, most amateurs of my acquaintance are not gifted inter¬preters of wx charts. We can visualise trends, but can't be expected to perform like trained and experienced Met. Office professionals. The advan¬tage of the above combination of faxpix and text is that it gives me the charts to help with my medium term planning, plus a professional interpre¬tation in plain and simple, language. Furthermore, I can either leave them in computer memory, or print them for prolonged and frequent study ¬even going over them with a fme pen to clarify the isobars and coastlines which might have been blurred by poor reception.
Trial and error
The newcomer to fax and RTTY must be prepared to play around with the tuning and perhaps even the aerialto get the best results. The Hints and Tips boxes below are the result of our own on-board experiments and should help - especially if you own a good class receiver, or are using a normal ship's SSB. As an example, this morning I was picking up extremely corrupt Hamburg charts on my normal, 7MHz setting, which is theoretically correct for here, but switching to 4MHz made all the dif¬ference, even though it was the wrong waveband for the distance, according to the book.

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