SSB Mysteries Revealed

s/v Honey Ryder came with an Icom m710 SSB.  Kewl.   Nice when equipment is already installed and working.  One less thing to buy and add to the boat thus saving $$$$.  However learning to use it has turned out to be a whole other adventure.  Step One - turn it on and play around with it thus figuring it out.  Oh no.  Not that simple.  We got nothing.  Not a sound other than static.  The buttons were NOT intuitive at all.  We couldn't even figure out how to tune it.  Many acquaintances and friends said "just tune in the channels and start listening."  Seems like a D-uh thing but we soon found out, not so easy!  Okay.  Step Two - get out the instruction manual and read.  WOW!  Might as well be written in some ancient lost tribal language.  Clear as freaking mud.  *Seriously who writes these manuals as most are gibberish!  Hint - if you are a manual writer, once you have completed whatever manual, done all the edits and it's perfect....take it home to your significant other and have them read through it (provided they aren't a manual writer as well).  If they can't easily understand and recite back what to do in plain English, start over!  Step Three - get my HAM license.  Yes, it's not the same as marine SSB but I thought it would help me understand the SSB.  A little but not much.  Step Four - hang out with JoCo Ham club/guys to learn and get advice on our marine SSB.  It helped a little.  Great group of people but once I started asking Marine SSB questions, they would say....."uh, don't know about marine SSB".  Step Five - find a fellow cruiser with SSB for help.  Enter - Bob from s/v Shazza.  HUGE help!

Step  Six - read "Marine SSB Radio For Idi-Yachts" by Captain Marti Brown.  OMG - terrific book.  She writes in plain English all about SSB - especially the confusion of licensing.  I would HIGHLY recommend Captain Marti's book.  I emailed her to let her know how much I appreciate her book and to ask her a couple of additional questions.  She was quick to respond back.  She also has a web site www.idiyachts.com you should check out as well.  Finally, thanks in part to this book and help from Bob, we are getting it.  Now we just need to go back to the manual and work through it together to figure out what channels have already been pre-programmed in by Icom and the previous two owners, check the receive and transmit channels, simplex/duplex,  and practice tuning into various net and such.  It's been a steep learning curve and we aren't done yet but it's getting better and we are excited to start using this valuable tool.