Before buying and even looking you should consider what type of comms you are getting into, there are a number of alternatives to the traditional Icom 710, which I have to say is an excellent radio and one that has provided me with hundreds of hours of trouble free service, with any of these systems the key to everything is a proper grounding.

When I talk about ?what type of comms? are you looking for eg. ship to shore, ship to ship, weatherfax, general weather info, e-mail etc.

Another point to bear in mind when looking at SSB is how technical are you, if you feel comfortable with items such as SWR, understand the basics of wave propagation, and concepts such as Simplex and Duplex channels then buying a Ham radio adjusted to cover all the marine frequencies is a cheaper and very good alternative, one of the differences is obviously the marine channels aren?t pre programmed, a second is that a HAM radio is obviously not GMDSS compatible (But is that necessary?) However they are certainly more flexible in many other areas.

Doing a HAM course is also a great grounding for the marine SSB course and it?s not that difficult, maybe a bit technical in places but not unduly and it certainly opens up another world of opportunities.

If anybody else wants any more info feel free to drop me a PM.

Happy hunting