VHF radio questions in case of emergency situation on Sakakawea.

[Wild and Free]

Does anyone run a VHF radio on their boat while up on Sakakawea? If so what brand is working for you and hand held or bigger mounted one? If so is there any rescue or LEO that monitors it regularly up there? Reason I ask is I have a Bennington Triple tube pontoon with an F150 4 stroke Yamaha with a 60 gallon fuel tank and we regularly put in on the eastern part of the lake and head all the way back to the west end and it is always on the back of my mind of who to call if problems arose or an accident happened or sudden storm hit ect.

I can cover a lot of ground with my setup on relatively little fuel, I have put an estimated 200 miles on over a long weekend on the lake and still had 1/4 tank of fuel left.

Jut looking to see if a VHF radio would be worth the time to install or a waste, I have rarely seen any LEO or rescue agencies on the lake at all in the 8 years of pontooning up there so this alone makes me wonder who would be there for a rescue if the need arose.

Last year alone we put in at Beulah bay and headed to where the little Missouri comes into the lake and didn't see a sign of a single boat in the leg of the lake where it turned back to the west up to and past the boat ramp north of Dunn Center.

 

[raider]

i've had 2 hard wired with 8' antennas in 2 other boats, also still have a handheld... i think that with vhf it is almost line of sight from one antenna to another... with the curvature of the earth it really cuts down the range... with the 8' antenna i prolly used it up to 10 miles at the hook once or twice, but that was pretty sketch... just have a handheld now mainly for fishing with other buddies on canadian trips...

fwiw, i have a portable wilson cell phone booster (bout $400???) that plugs into a 12 volt socket that i throw in the boat for emergencies in the summer... if tshtf, even if you don't have good enough signal for a call, text a pic of the gps coordinates of your graph to a buddy... a text will go through with little signal, and he will know what to do, and they will know exactly there you were when the pic was taken...

 

[Wild and Free]

Good points raider. guess I should at least install a gps unit of some sort then. I don't even own a smart phone, just an 8+ year old flip phone yet.

 

[johnr]

Never had one personally, but a few guys I fish with do, 8 ft antenna seems to reach every where we ever fish on the big lake

 

[Norske]

I had a marine band radio with 8' antenna most of the 30 years I lived there. At that time, "Eagle Base" (Kit's Marina) 60' antenna could pick up a signal from as far away as Beulah Bay, but my boat had to be away from the shore for line-of-sight" signals. Almost all the bigger boats will have marine band radios, and most will come to aid a fisherman with a problem.
I don't know if anyone (including Indian Hills) on the western half of the reservoir has a base station, it never hurts to ask.