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My
new VHF radio has two setup menu items I’ve never heard of. What
do “U.I.C.” and “FIPS Code” do? B.A.,
via e-mail
U.I.C. is
simply shorthand for your choice of the U.S., International, or Canadian
channel sets. The differences aren’t major, but a few channels have
varied preferred-use designations, and more critically, a few are duplex
in one part of the world and simplex in another. Transmission frequencies
are always the same, but if you aren’t set up right, you won’t
hear the responses on certain channels. Support of all three sets is pretty
common now, which means you can take the radio anywhere.
FIPS is more exotic,
and I hadn’t heard of it myself until I tested the Uniden radios
for this column. It has to do with an advanced feature of the National
Weather Radio (NWR) alert system, which is the useful automatic tone that
many VHFs will sound when a hazardous weather “event” is predicted
in your area and about to be discussed on a WX channel. S.A.M.E., or Specific
Area Message Encoding, can put the explicit warning, watch, or statement
right on your radio screen, be it for a tornado, a tsunami, or coastal
flooding. By the way, as part of the Homeland Security effort, NWR now
also carries warnings about emergencies that have nothing to do with weather.
At any rate, the FIPS
codes, or Federal Information Processing Standards numbers for specific
counties (I swear, I didn’t make any of these names up), can be used
to limit the S.A.M.E. messages to just the specific areas within your
general VHF area that you care about. And if you don’t want to hear
another word on the subject, that’s fine. As long as you have weather-alert
on, you’re going to get all the warnings; FIPS is just a way to limit
them. If, on the other hand, you want the whole story, it’s available
at www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr. But
hold onto your hat, it’s storming many more strange acronyms than
I’ve mentioned over there. —B.E.
Got a marine electronics
question? Write to Electronics Q&A, Power & Motoryacht,
260 Madison Ave., 8th Fl., New York, NY 10016. Fax: (917) 256-2282. e-mail:
PMYElectronics@primedia.com.
No phone calls please.
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