Coast Guard Safety Alert on HF Communications

[joehersey]

The US Coast Guard has just published a Safety Alert Know your high seas comms equipment and how to use them. You just might save your own life when in trouble offshore! Apparently Coast Guard Marine Inspectors discovered that more than a few vessel masters and operators had no idea that the Coast Guard ceased distress watchkeeping on 2182 kHz four years ago, and did not know on what HF distress frequencies the Coast Guard were keeping watch.

See https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/pdf/marc...yAlert0817.pdf

The Notice has an email address that will reach the watchstanders at USCG Communications Command, the group the runs the Coast Guard's HF services. It may be useful to keep that address handy for reporting problems with any USCG HF service, including marine safety and weather broadcasts over NAVTEX, HF wefax, HF voice or HF SITOR.

[JPA Cate]

Here's the frequencies:

The Coast Guard keeps watch on the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) SSB-HF
frequencies 4125, 6215, 8291 and 12,290 kHz in place of the old international radiotelephone distress
frequency 2182 kHz.

Ann

[Auspicious]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

The Coast Guard keeps watch on the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) SSB-HF
frequencies 4125, 6215, 8291 and 12,290 kHz in place of the old international radiotelephone distress
frequency 2182 kHz.

The Icom M802 has all those frequencies in the factory memories, and the DSC on that radio transmits on the frequencies associated - all the marine HF bands.

[ka4wja]

Joe, Ann, et al,

1) Well the bureaucracy of the US Gov't takes some time, but eventually they do get things right!
It was over a year ago that I spent days tracking down someone in authority at USCG to let 'em know that their IT/webmaster had inadvertently replaced some of their "comms" info with old/outdated info (old cached pages in their servers)....
Started with a senior chief at CAMSLANT, and after a couple days, finally got a USCG "Captain" (in DC) to put me in direct contact with the "Cmdr" in charge...and in a few hours the pages were gone....but they called me 2 days later to "verify" their new info before they posted it to the public.
It was all good...

And, it was then that I suggested that they post exactly what they have now done, as I informed them that darn few pleasure boat owners/skippers have any clue how to contact the USCG when outside of VHF range!
(I don't have any info regarding how many commercial mariners were ignorant of this, but suspect it's darn few!!)

I'm happily surprised that they finally got around to at least trying to educated US sailors...

Originally Posted by joehersey

The US Coast Guard has just published a Safety Alert Know your high seas comms equipment and how to use them. You just might save your own life when in trouble offshore! Apparently Coast Guard Marine Inspectors discovered that more than a few vessel masters and operators had no idea that the Coast Guard ceased distress watchkeeping on 2182 kHz four years ago, and did not know on what HF distress frequencies the Coast Guard were keeping watch.

2) Still amazed at how many pleasure boat skippers are not aware of the GMDSS....
Not to worry, I won't be ranting about this now!
But, how many years of this being a international standard/system does it take....initial implementation was in 1992, and compliance was required by all signatory nations and all SOLAS vessels by Jan 1999 (that's 18.5 years ago!)

FYI....just so there is no misunderstanding, since 1999, none of the signatory nations, nor SOLAS vessels are required to maintain any MF / HF "Voice" (SSB) Radio Watch at all!! But, are required to maintain MF-DSC and/or HF-DSC
Radio Watch, with HF "voice" and/or HF "text" capability for seamless two-way comms after initial contact by DSC...

And, with the exception of the USCG, AMSA (Australia) and NZMA (NZ Taupo Radio), nobody is maintaining an HF "Voice" Radio Watch!!
{Of course, Shipcom's WLO, does maintain a voice watch on 5 of their freqs...ITU 405, 607, 824, 1212, and 1641...and KLB, on 805 aand 1209.}


HF-DSC is the preferred / primary way to contact the USCG, when outside VHF radio range....




3) Ann, while you got the Voice frequencies correct....only one of the USCG stations (NMC, Pt. Reyes, CA) maintains a watch on all 4 of them 24 hours a day!
BUT...all their stations do monitor all 5 HF-DSC freqs 24/7...

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

Here's the frequencies:

The Coast Guard keeps watch on the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) SSB-HF
frequencies 4125, 6215, 8291 and 12,290 kHz in place of the old international radiotelephone distress
frequency 2182 kHz.

Ann

Please have a look at the page...
https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=cgcommsCall


Hope this helps...

John