The Offshore Voyaging Reference Site

Tips For Receiving Weather Fax

Starting with this chapter I’m going to focus on weather reception tools that work when we are offshore or in remote places where the internet is not available. Let’s start with weatherfax and why it’s still important.


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Chris

When off soundings, I convert weather faxes to charts in our chart plotting software (this also takes care of skew). This allows for instant geo-referencing and facilitates planning.

Jim Patek (S/V Let's Go!)

Can you recommend a “hardware” demodulator and does this allow the signal to come through without blasting over the SSB speaker?

I have been using moc.liasaliam@rehtaew‘s small TIF weather charts accessed via the sat phone. The size of the small TIF is nominally around 17 kb so to do what you do, i.s. slideshowing a series, might be a bit expensive at $1.75 or so a chart. But, when the WF is giving a poor or non-existent report, it’s a very good way to go and 100% reliable.

Richard Hudson

Are the UK weather faxes receivable from western Greenland? I was there last summer and, not realizing UK weather faxes covered areas farther north than Boston ones and assuming transmissions from UK would not make it over the mountains, never tried.

I found the Arctic Surface Analysis broadcast from Iqaluit to be quite useful, since it was the only weatherfax I knew of then that covered areas farther north than the ones from Boston. Not an easy fax to read (much data, all fine lines), but it does show all the weather systems in the Arctic.

Larry Robbins

Receiving faxes at sea over SSB using either a soundcard or hardware demodulator delivers noise in the audio signal received as noise in the fax image. This can make reading the fax quite challenging. The Ham radio version of sailmail (airmail) has a huge selection of weather charts and forecasts available on request meaning that they can be acquired when propagation is good and/or when planning is at hand. These require a ham license, a HF SSB that transmits on ham bands, and a pactor modem. Gribs are also available by subscription – that is – regularly updated for an area specified in the subscription request. Ham bands are great for social networking and emergency communication. Licenses in US do not require morse code these days.

Larry Robbins

(no editing function) The pactor modem faxes are noise free. Airmail Ham service is also free and includes email. Larry