You may have noticed some changes in terms of the channels being used. The reason for this is that a transition to VDES (VHF Digital Data Exchange System) services is currently being rolled out across Europe. This is a new maritime communication system for digital messaging.
We can imagine you may have some questions about it, so we would like to inform you about the main changes.
- VDES will officially become operational on 1 January 2024.
- You can still use the current VHF with existing transmitters until the end of this year without any problems, but it is advisable to make your VHF radio ‘VDES ready’.
- The VDES transition involves changes to the regular list of VHF channels and private channels, which means the latter will no longer be available for analogue voice communication.
- Raymarine will ensure that a software update is issued for all VHF radios within Raymarine’s current product range (Ray50, 52, 53, 60, 63, 70, 73, 90 and 91) over the next few months to make your device fully VDES ready.
- Raymarine is currently looking at the possibility of also reprogramming older Raymarine VHF radios (Ray49, 55, 218, and Ray260). It is not technically possible to programme different software for any VHF radios which are not listed. In that case an old VHF radio will therefore have to be replaced in order to meet the requirements.
More information on the changes due to VDES can be found here: