Did it ever work...

Called out to meet a visiting boat recently.

A wooden yacht almost two years old, nicely fitted out and the wiring was pretty neat. Owner complained that the VHF radio just wasn’t performing as he’d hoped.

While waiting for the boat to arrive I checked for her on AIS, only to find no history, despite the owner confirming she had a transceiver on board. So far it seemed to be maybe the usual failed aerial fault, assuming of course the AIS was on a splitter.

In an earlier port a local tech had apparently checked the radio and aerial and reported all to be well, although the owner didn’t know what tests were made.

After confirming a fault it didn’t take long to find the problem was on the aerial side, it took longer to find the radio transceiver (a black-box type radio where the box is concealed in a convenient cupboard) than it did to know what was wrong.

Spot the fault,.. can you see where the mounting screw is in relation to the aerial cable?

Can’t imagine that the radio had ever worked, never mind how the first tech reported no fault found….

To be honest the screw into the cable was maybe an easy mistake for the installer to make. You had to contort your torso just to get in to the cupboard at floor level, then try to get your head into the cupboard high enough to see the top of the transceiver, which just wasn’t really possible.

I had to disconnect the aerial to test it, and in doing so found the cable was jammed. Shoving my phone up in to the corner and taking a picture is how I ‘saw’ the problem.