Marine radio speaker options?

[JimN]

A friend's boat has a hailer on top of the radar arch and it has seen better days, what are some of the better choices? I see Shakespeare and other brands that I wouldn't use (Pyle and several off-brands) but really, have they improved over the decades?

[Viper]

I haven't had an issue with my Pyle

[JimN]

Source of the post I haven't had an issue with my Pyle

Thanks- my experience with them isn't great and I made an assumption that I shouldn't.

[JimN]

Source of the post I haven't had an issue with my Pyle

How loud is your hailer? I got the one on the Santego to work, but it's not very loud. Obviously, it will feed back if it's too loud, but inside of the storage building, it wasn't as loud as I would expect.

[Viper]

Don't know how to answer that. It's a matter of perspective I guess, it's loud enough for me! I use it mostly for close quarters communications. Can someone hear it in the distance if I use my foghorn feature? maybe, but it really depends on how much noise they have going on at their end. I suppose for that, if I really wanted to, I could always look into a mod to hook up the auto fog feature to the regular horns on board.

[km1125]

Source of the post

Source of the post I haven't had an issue with my Pyle

How loud is your hailer? I got the one on the Santego to work, but it's not very loud. Obviously, it will feed back if it's too loud, but inside of the storage building, it wasn't as loud as I would expect.

What's driving the hailer?.

I had a dedicated hailer on my last boat (speaker and hailing driver). The hailer was an old Ray Jefferson model and would put out an honest 40 watts. It had horn and automated foghorn options as well as alarm, but was a great hailer. In hailing mode you could not turn it all the way up because there would be feedback. You could also listen which did help a lot because you could heat people on the dock or other boats with it that you couldn't hear without it.

I also had a Raytheon 201 marine radio with the hailer option. Only put out 10W in hailer mode and was noticeably not as powerful as the Ray Jefferson, but plenty loud to do the job.

The speaker I had was a very old and I don't recall the model, but it was rated at 40W and looked physically exactly like this:
https://a.co/d/47zgzWQ

It worked great and was VERY clear both in hailing and listening.

Best use of the hailer came while I was anchored in the middle of 50 or 60 other boats waiting for a fireworks show to begin. Another boat came cruising through the crowd throwing a huge wake rocking everyone. Before he got close to me I was able to get to the hailer and turn it up to the max volume (before feedback) and hailed "NO WAKE ZONE MORON" and got a HUGE round of applause and the waking boat stopped waking boats.

[Midnightsun]

Speaking of hailers. I have never had much luck with them due to restricted mounting locations in my last boat and even this one. If the hailer is installed on the arch there is just too much feedback from it to be useful as it seems it is to close. Is there any secret recipe to eliminate feedback when the hailer is installed not far enough from the mic?

[km1125]

Source of the post Speaking of hailers. I have never had much luck with them due to restricted mounting locations in my last boat and even this one. If the hailer is installed on the arch there is just too much feedback from it to be useful as it seems it is to close. Is there any secret recipe to eliminate feedback when the hailer is installed not far enough from the mic?

I've often wondered if some of the newer hailer options out there used some digital audio processing to eliminate feedback. The technology is certainly there (and has been for decades) but I'm not sure it's been implemented in a product.

[bud37]

Imho...forget the fixed hailer and go to crew headsets and mics for nice quiet communication for docking etc...... .

Run the fog horn signal blasts thru the boats horns.....my two cents anyway.

[JimN]

Source of the post

Source of the post

Source of the post I haven't had an issue with my Pyle

How loud is your hailer? I got the one on the Santego to work, but it's not very loud. Obviously, it will feed back if it's too loud, but inside of the storage building, it wasn't as loud as I would expect.

What's driving the hailer?.

I had a dedicated hailer on my last boat (speaker and hailing driver). The hailer was an old Ray Jefferson model and would put out an honest 40 watts. It had horn and automated foghorn options as well as alarm, but was a great hailer. In hailing mode you could not turn it all the way up because there would be feedback. You could also listen which did help a lot because you could heat people on the dock or other boats with it that you couldn't hear without it.

I also had a Raytheon 201 marine radio with the hailer option. Only put out 10W in hailer mode and was noticeably not as powerful as the Ray Jefferson, but plenty loud to do the job.

The speaker I had was a very old and I don't recall the model, but it was rated at 40W and looked physically exactly like this:
https://a.co/d/47zgzWQ

It worked great and was VERY clear both in hailing and listening.

Best use of the hailer came while I was anchored in the middle of 50 or 60 other boats waiting for a fireworks show to begin. Another boat came cruising through the crowd throwing a huge wake rocking everyone. Before he got close to me I was able to get to the hailer and turn it up to the max volume (before feedback) and hailed "NO WAKE ZONE MORON" and got a HUGE round of applause and the waking boat stopped waking boats.

I would like manufacturers of this kind of equipment to include the full specs- the Amazon link shows 40W max input and in another line, "It features a sensitivity of 120 dB with an impedance of 8 ohm". The sensitivity needs to show the input voltage, not the impedance. If it's 120dB @40W, fine, but they need to show this and it's not 120dB @5W- the 9dB loss matters.

Sorry, but as an audio guy, this annoys me because it can lead to all kinds of problems with speaker lifespan when someone uses the spec and it doesn't perform as needed.

'The radio is an Icom IC-M100 and the manual shows that the speaker needs to be 4-8 Ohm, 5W minimum. I hope the output is more than 5W, to be honest. I was always under the impression that these were to be used when communicating with other boats while under way or when rescuing someone in a disabled boat or from the water. I don't expect it to be heard when some nimrod blows past with open exhaust, though.