May. 9, 2009 - Changes to the Radio Regulations

A few weeks ago Wendy spotted an article about changes to the European inland waterways radio requirements. A bit more research reveals that the Netherlands along with a number of other EU countries (United Kingdon excepted - of course!) signed up to some agreement called RAINWAT some years ago regarding the requirements for VHF radio on board boats within the EU inland waterways. UK as normal didn't want to "join the party" so were offered a derogation.

Well, the long and short of it all is that the derogation has ended and the UK has decided to join up to RAINWAT. So what this means is that we have to get Ofcom, who issue our Radio Licence to issue us with an ATIS number and amend our Radio Licence. Sounds like a load of bureaucratic nonsense. Anyway, apparently one can e-mail Ofcom and they send you stuff out in the post. So last night I sent off the e-mail and we will wait and see what happens.

Of more concern, was that as I was researching the issue I then find that an ATIS enabled radio is illegal in the UK (apparently) and that under RAINWAT boats in the Netherlands are supposed to  monitor two channels at the same time - Ah, Dual Watch, you say!. Well apparently not you must have two radios. That's okay, we have a second portable VHF. That won't do as, apparently in the Netherlands, our portable radio is illegal because it can receive too many channels including one of the ones we're supposed to monitor. Apparently what this means is that we should have two fixed VHF radios. I really don't believe all our neighbours in the marina have two fixed VHF radios! I suspect some of them don't even have one!

We will have to ask around when we are next over. Which by the way is in two weeks time (Bank Holiday Weekend). James is coming down for a long weekend and we will go over on Friday evening and come back Monday evening. A quiet weekend is planned - Haringvreter for two nights with lots of chilling!