"Wayne.B" wrote

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 01:04:36 -0500, "Jack Painter"
wrote:
In the interest of safe boating, I encourage anyone who is contemplating
coastal cruising to contact their local USCG Group well in advance of the
trip, and ask them for the estimated area of VHF and 2182 khz coverage
along
the route that they plan to take. An EPIRB is an important safety device
in
any cruising vessels inventory, but it cannot replace vital voice
communications.

==================================

Jack, does the USCG respond to "radio checks" on HF frequencies, and
if so, what frequencies would you recommend?

Hi Wayne,

USCG always responds to radio checks. And as Doug offered though, on VHF it
is indeed strongly discouraged, and that becomes your "radio check". Channel
9 is allocated for both calling/hailing and as an alternate distress
frequency (ship-to-ship only) in most areas now. This was done to alleviate
the congestion in busy areas on Ch-16. It is also part of an experiment to
move ALL calling/hailing from Ch-16 to Ch-9, leaving Ch-16 for urgency and
distress only. Ch-9 is where ship to ship or ship to shore radio checks
should take place. Radio operating procedures for VHF-marine do state that
no "any station" type radio checks should ever be made. I paraphrased that
so you would understand that calling the "USCG" is just like making an
any-station call. We don't know if you are in distress, an urgency, safety
issue, which Coast Guard unit is requested, etc. All of the above are valid
reasons for just sayng "USCG", but doing that for a radio check in congested
areas is NOT. Now if you called a SPECIFIC Coast Guard Group or Station,
asking to switch to their wkg frequency for radio check, they should
accomodate you in a courteous fashion, unless something else urgent is going
on with their unit.

On HF: Since HF duplex calling channels are no longer guarded (Jan-1-2005),
and instead the associated simplex voice channels for 4,6,8, and 12 meg
DSC-GMDSS are, I am not sure if that makes them the place for a radio check
with USCG. It hasn't happened to me yet and I have not seen guidance on
this.

As I understand, a VESSEL USING CALLSIGN could make a HF radio check call to
any particular ship or coastal-station (never any-station, same as above) on
4125, 6215, 8291 or 12290 which are now guarded by CAMSLANT and CAMSPAC and
KODIAK. A USCG operator will answer any non-distress HF call on a
case-available basis. I didn't tell you to do this, but I would answer you.

The PURPOSE of guarding 4125, 6215, 8291 and 12290 is to be READY for
distress traffic voice calls on the associated channel for most of the
DSC-GMDSS channels. These newly guarded channels (US is the first nation to
do so btw) are ALSO allocated for "Calling". We'll have to see how that part
works out.

[0322z sidebar: USCG Group St Pete loud and clear in Virginia Beach, VA on
2182, shifting to 2670 khz for offshore marine information broadcast] ;-)

Maybe I can get back to you with a more definitive HF-answer later Wayne,
sorry it's just too new a procedure to be sure yet.

Jack Painter
Virginia Beach, Virginia