Earlier this year we were approached by Al Charles who was attempting to combine two of his favourite past times; fishing and jet skiing. Al was passionate about making his Jet Ski suitable for offshore fishing around the UK coasts and proceeded to squeeze a complete suite of navigation equipment in to his Seadoo Jet Ski.
Al managed to install one of our latest AIT1500 Class B transponders, which shared a single Shakespeare VHF antenna, with the Icom VHF by using our SPL2000 antenna splitter. The AIS data was then displayed on a Lowrance combo chart plotter and fish finder.
Al who did all of the design and installation himself, including the fibreglass fabrication, had to work hard to get everything to fit within the tight confines of the Jet Ski, but as you can see from the photos on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/al.charles.144) the results are incredibly good. On numerous outings this season the installation has worked faultlessly, allowing Al to see exactly where all of the large vessels are while he is fishing and also transmitting his position while he concentrates on reeling in his next catch.
