Listening to HD radio the first few weeks at home I can say I am very impressed with FM HD. After getting an antenna in the air I can now hear WETA in Washington D.C. at 90.9. WETA is a classical music station. The station is static free.  Listening is a real pleasure. I get all of the pleasure and none of the hassles. Likewise my experience with WAMU-2 at American University. Their bluegrass channel is terrific.

The consumer that hasn’t made the switch is really missing something in my estimation. HD FM radio should be bringing listeners back to FM radio. What would really help the transition is GOOD HD programming that invited folks to make the switch. In southern Maryland these two stations really made it worthwhile for me.

AM radio so far is another story.  The only semi-reliable signal is WMAL on 630 KHz. AM radio stations using HD are just too far away to make it anything more than a novelty.   There is a perpetual heterodyne accompanying the WMAL broadcasts that knocks out HD. It is intermittent during the day.  But again, there are a few AM stations with good signals in this area but these stations are not yet AM HD!  It sure would be nice to hear WNAV 1430 make the switch.

It is not a new hobby but it is new to me. Ship watching is akin to railroad train watching is akin to airplane watching and so on. Ship watching is fun especially if you live where I do in Southern Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay. My wife and I can see passing ships from our living room window. As luck would have it we own a home on a small hill with a panoramic view of the Chesapeake Bay at Plum Point, Maryland.

A wireless add on of sorts has added to the excitement of ship watching. In addition to our binoculars our Automatic Identification System or AIS receiver gives us lots of information about the ships coming and going. We now see data transmitted by most passing ships on a computer screen that includes the name of the ship, it’s destination, speed, geographic coordinates, and even its draft, width, and length. We know the call sign of the ship, in which country it is registered, and its international registration number maintained by the International Telecommunications Union. Even cooler we have exported the data to a small Internet based Google map even our neighbors can enjoy.

The Internet is a great place to find information on ship watching or ship spotting. Many enthusiasts maintain ship watching pages that include photographs and data about many of the ships civilian and military. It is a great thrill to see a huge cargo ship go by on the Bay as well as a U.S. Navy submarine with its Navy gunboat escorts, and even the Coast Guard’s Tall Ship, The Eagle, the Schooner Virginia, or the Tall Ship The Pride of Baltimore 2.

Wireless nuts like me can add to the visual enjoyment by adding AIS data. Picture yourself sitting on your deck under your umbrella watching a ship pass by through your binoculars and then glancing down at your laptop to read more about the ship in front of you. You pick up your digital camera and save a photo of the ship so the next time it passes by you have a photo of the previous encounter or a picture to share with friends that missed it!

There are companies like SiiTech.com that share their AIS data used in commercial applications with the general public. We also send our data to SiiTech so that others living along the Bay can see more data about the ships than our little novelty website currently provides.

Getting started in AIS is technical and it’s not inexpensive. The PopularWireless AIS receiver was purchased from MilTech Marine for about $289. It is the SR-161 AIS “Smart Radio” receiver. The antenna connected to our receiver is a J-Pole antenna by Arrow Antenna for $39. The sixty or so feet of cable is LMR-600 low-loss cable purchased at around a $1.00 per foot. Then there was the climbing, crawling, and construction required to put it all together. The receiver is connected by serial cable to a good computer with lots of computing power and the software used to display the ships on a local PC marine chart is ShipPlotter available from ShipPlotter.com for about $30.

The cool thing about this Smart Receiver is that it runs on twelve volts DC and takes very little power to operate. One could travel with it to various harbors and points where ships pass and use it to add enjoyment to their ship spotting. Picture yourself with a laptop over looking your favorite harbor monitoring the comings and goings as you watch and photograph your favorite ships. To use the receiver in a mobile environment you simply add a good magnet mount VHF antenna tuned for the AIS frequencies. There you are having the time of your life with AIS and your binoculars.

Even when its foggy on your favorite waterway you can still see the ships on your AIS radio map. Combine your AIS monitoring with a simple inexpensive radio scanner and you can also listen to the ship’s officers talk with other vessels and perhaps even the Coast Guard. Scanning the marine radio frequencies is fun even if you do not have an AIS receiver. The radio signals from ships generally travel forty to fifty miles or so but during tropospheric ducting events the radio signals here have come from Virginia, New York, New Jersey and far out into the Atlantic Ocean. This aspect of the hobby is a fascinating introduction into the science of radio wave propagation. Careful, because this wireless hobby may be enough to interest you in Amateur Radio!

Ship watching has never been so much fun. The hobby is great for adults and children. Visit the PopularWireless.com AIS site for the Chesapeake Bay if you are curious. This hobby is so cool we may just have a Ship Spotting forum on the Personal Wireless BBS sooner than you think!

PopularWireless is a community website. We’re not not just a blog. The blog is actually new. Our users tend to gravitate more toward the bulletin board community and if you take the time to visit the Personal Wireless BBS you’ll find out why.  We are a community of regular users interested in wireless hobbies, two-way radio, gadets, consumer issues, cellular telephones, you name it. If it has no wires we talk about it here.

The blog is the place to catch up on interesting stories from around the web or to read our own content. We invite YOU to be a part of our wireless community even iof your computer is connected by  wires