[amsat-bb] Re: Ham Radios on Cruises

[Donald Jacob]

I believe that you will find the corporate answer to ham radio
equipment aboard a ship is "no". All lines, standard disclaimer. That
being said, the ships Master (Captain) can grant use of the equipment
on his/her ship during the cruise.
In other words, if you ask corporate offices the will tell you; No.
You must ask the Captain of the ship you sail on.

This topic comes up all the time and the answer is the same.

I was just on a cruise and as usual I bring a hand held (or 2). On the
return up the coast of Baja I was on my balcony testing which DStar
repeaters in Southern California I could hit.
I had a QSO or two, then put my radio back up. All of a sudden there
was a loud knock at the cabin door and it opened with 3 security/fire
types coming in announcing that a fire alarm had gone off! Apparently
there is one on the balcony that the RF, 5 watts UHF, had set off. No,
I did not have permission to operate on board, and I did not tell them
about my transmission, so I guess the balcony got a new sensor!

As a note, everytime I ask ships personal what the difference between
FRS transmission and Ham radio transmission, they do not have an
answer.  Quite possibly they are concerned about HF transmissions. It
would be something to pursue, but for now
Amateur Radio is not allowed on board cruise ships.

73
Don  WB5EKU



On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 9:21 AM, Clint Bradford
<clintbrad4d at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>> Can we nail down all the cruise ships that prohibit it and those that allow
> it into a single document.  Then provide a link to it on the AMSAT web page?
>
>
> Not really. The cruise line I used prohibits it - on their Web site. But our group asked and was allowed free reign with our gear.
>
> So a Web page citing that Holland America prohibits anything is irrelevant.
>
> The best advice, IMHO, is to ask your travel agent for assistance with any "extraordinary" requests.
>
> Clint, K6LCS
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