Electronics

The last time I was on Fritha I was sorting out the electronics; my dad had installed a new VHF, a Standard Horizon GX2000E. It is quite a bit of kit, on it's 2 inch screen it shows you the channel your on, your position (which is determined via the inbuilt GPS) and also an AIS radar screen. Not that you can see much on a radar screen which is smaller than an old Nokia screen, but it's good to know that the option is there to confuse yourself with ships which may or may not run you over.

However, on turning the volume knob nothing happened. Strange I thought and promptly repeated this step several times, flicking the main "VHF,GPS" switch between tries. Still no response from the unit apart from a very faint crackle when I turned the volume knob. Great! This thing must be broken! With the fuse intact I took the unit apart, measuring voltages and currents of various cables within the unit, the power was there, so why didn't the unit work? Well, the simple explanaition must be; it's broken!

Looking for a suitable replacement at my place of work, I decided to check out what GOOGLE had to say about the problem. Within 10 minutes I had stumbled across the owners manual of the device. Glancing over the trouble shooting section I saw a paragraph about the device not turning on:

Reading this in utter disbelief I realised that the unit on Fritha was not actually broken, just that I had not pressed the volume knob in to turn the unit on.

Although I am relieved at being able to save some money as I don't have to buy a new unit, I do not feel the price of being ridiculed by my colleagues at Gaelforce is worth it. I should have just told them how in a fantastically valiant effort I managed to rebuild the mainboard of the VHF, thus making it work and saving myself the embarassment of hearing "push on, push off" everytime I go to work.

Just to make it clear for all those who do the same mistake, you need to press the button marked in the picture above to turn the device on.