ETERNAUT

Changing MMSI, VHF Sailor 6222

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I managed to change the MMSI of my VHF Sailor 6222.

It has been a long and daunting task.

The shipyard had installed the radios into the overhead panel before placing the whole board under the ceiling.

Apparently it had not occurred to them that, although commercial grade, radios might need to be accessed from the backside at some point during their lifetime. One example would be: changing the unit’s in-line fuse.

In my occasion the need to access the rear of my VHF was that a “helping hand” had entered an “8” into the first digit of the MMSI. That must have happened during one of the first two sea trials before I had time to enter the assigned MMSI.

MMSI explained

For those of you who haven’t sat any marine radio courses and exams: Most marine radios can (better: have to) be coded with a unique 9 digit number. This number refers to the ship radio station and is assigned by the Communication Authority of the country in which the ship is registered. You can compare it with a telephone number: If I am aware of the MMSI of a vessel close by (let’s say through AIS), I can dial the number into my radio and give that ship’s radio operator some sort of message to contact me on a particular channel. (To explain this process in detail is beyond the purpose of this blog)

The first three numbers refer to the country the ship is registered in: The MMSI for ETERNAUT for example starts with 232. The first three digits 232 to 235 refer to UK registered ships.

The “8” as first number would refer to a handheld DSC VHF Radio. That means that my wrongly coded radio is illegal to be used as it’s identifier relates to a different registration / user.

MMSI change usually not easy

A ship is not supposed to change registration while at sea. That’s why most manufactures have set a limit how often a MMSI can be changed before a factory reset has to be performed.

A lot of units allow you 2 changes… the VHF Sailor 6222 does not allow the operator even one single change. You made a mistake or had someone pressing a wrong number before you manage to intervene? …bad luck!

In my case this “helping hand” which dialed the “8” could cost me a lot of money and time to get my radio coded correctly.

Internet is the game changer

I was frustrated. Again I had to fix something someone else had “broken” on our boat!

Looking for solutions I consulted Dr. Google, my favorite Cruiser Forum and the Trawler Forum.

A combination of all sources pointed into the right direction:

Some friendly fellows offer the service tool user manual for the Sailor units as pdf download on their website.

The WWW with all the tons of information made my day.

The process

1. Get access to the back side of the radio

There are several ports on the backside of your Sailor 6222. One of them is the LAN port. This port is mostly used to feed GPS data into the unit.

This is also the port I needed to access to connect it to my PC. Seahorse Marine had installed my radios on the overhead panel. The panel is beautiful cherry wood… but unfortunately without any maintenance access.

I skipped initial plans to cut (saw) a maintenance hole on the underside to gain access. The damage would have been too big, the unsightliness too bad. Not to mention the possibility to damage one of the many wires hidden inside the panel. Instead I planned to home in onto my target from the far (left) side.

At first I had to remove the control for the centrifugal wiper. That was easy play.

That in term gave me enough access to use the multi tool with attached saw blade to cut away a piece of wood blocking my hand from reaching the rear screws of the SSB. During this process I nearly set the boat on fire: Due to the tightness of the opening I was not able to hold the multi tool in a constant straight angle. The sawing blade was slightly bent which must have caused enormous friction. Thankfully I smelled and discovered the faint smoke erupting from the cut early. A wet towel solved the issue in a fraction of a second. Lesson learned: Keep some wet towels and water close by if drilling or sawing in tight spaces.

Thereafter I was able to remove the SSB. The SSB sits next to the VHF, so this opened up a hole through which I was able to reach the said LAN port of the VHF.

2. Attach LAN wire, run Firefox web browser

The service tool user guide I have my hands on asks you to use PC and Firefox 3.6. to log into the radio using it’s IP address.

You can find the radio’s IP address in the System Setup:

• Switch on VHF Sailor 6222
• Go to “System Setup” by:
• Press “More” key 2x
• Press “Setup” key 1x
• Press “arrow right” 5x
• Now you are in “System Setup”
• Turn brightness knob counter clockwise to scroll down to the bottom
• Last line of System Setup shows IP address of your radio

Further you will require user and password:

User: admin

Password: sailorsailor

Initially I was reluctant running an old browser on my laptop. I started with the newest version of Mozilla Firefox. I was able to get to the administration menu by typing the IP address into the web browser’s address field and gained access using above mentioned user name and password. But then my luck came to an end as I could not access any other page of the browser access tool.

I also tried different browsers (Safari, Chrome), Mac as well as Windows 10 PC. Always the same result: Access to Administration page approved, access to all other pages denied.

Determined to get my radio setup in order after all the work to gain access I started downloading different versions of Firefox. Thankfully Mozilla offers all old versions for download here.

Beware of the warnings and remember to update or delete the browser after VHF setup!

3. If the chosen Firefox version does not work

I had to try several different Firefox versions until I finally achieved to gain access to my radio.

In the process I came to following conclusion:

• If you can log into the Administration page but you are denied any other pages of the Sailor 6222 browser tool: try an older version of Firefox than you are using currently
• If a red page appears: Error 503, “Service Unavailable” : try a newer version of the Firefox browser

This way I homed in on the Firefox version required for my Sailor 6222: I had to use Firefox 4.0.1 to gain access.

Firefox version 4.0.1 for VHF Sailor 6222 factory reset

After gaining full access to the VHF web browser tool it was easy play: I entered the correct MMSI on the “Configuration” site of the browser access tool and pressed the tab: “Apply”.

Switch the radio off before disconnecting the LAN cable!

The changes you have done with the web browser access tool become active after rebooting the radio.

After that exercise I just had to put everything back in order.