"Jack Painter" wrote in
news:8gVnc.35334$pJ1.926@lakeread02:

I see that in the frequency list that it says: "The Coast Guard does
NOT monitor GMDSS radiotelephone or radiotelex channels."

Right, and this is more or less standard worldwide, if a DSC emergency
call is received then the related voice channel would have callouts
made on it. We do this for any emergency received, regardless of how
far away it might be.

If you have GMDSS implemented on your boat, and you see an emergency in
range of your locals not being responded to, I will call CG on VHF and bump
them in the head to get their attention.

If someone listening to the distress calls from "Morning Dew" go
unresponded-to here in Charleston, and had raised hell to kick that
watchstander's ass at CG Group Charleston, 3 boys and a daddy wouldn't have
died on the jetties from daddy's stupidity and two families might not have
been grieving, today. If we have to monitor FOR them to save sailors'
lives, then so be it.


I have heard several people say that they have never been able to
raise the Coast guard on any of those frequencies. Even though they
elude to the fact that they monitor them at the top of the page.

There was probably a misunderstanding about those being monitored
then, GMDSS are no, except 2182 which is guarded by Groups.. These are
guarded: http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/marcomms/...uency/call.htm

In order to monitor GMDSS, then CG first has to INSTALL GMDSS in all
stations, as required by international law. Equipment at CG stations is
archaeic. At Charleston, we spent a fortune on a new gate, gatehouse and
liquor store, not on silly electronics equipment to save lives. Our
priorities are all screwed up.


Awhile back I saw something on the Coast guard site that said "you
may need to make repeated calls for lengthy time" in order to raise
them.

Are you saying that these channels are monitored?

Not sure if you were talking about the scheduled-guarded freqs I just
referenced, so please let me know. While we have many transmitters at
each of the remote sites (Boston, Virginia Beach (called Portsmouth
out of tradition), Miami, and New Orleans, sometimes all available
transmitters could be busy covering SCN, Air to Ground, HFDX, e-mails
and other Cutter traffic, etc. So a (hopefully) short wait is almost
assured at any given moment. Even before the USCG and USCG Auxiliary
joined the Department of Homeland Security, we were tasked with
supporting Customs, Immigration, Border Patrol, Agriculture, and
security. Those support missions are now ten-fold of what they once
were, and the traditional law enforcements of Fisheries, treaties,
commercial saftey and pleasure boat safety are growing every year as
well. S it is a challenging and exciting time to be serving and I hope
your future experiences are all supportive and satisfactory. And as
Doug alluded to jokingly, no a report of an incident won't fix things,
but it helps, and the lack of effort to improve the system never got
us anywhere!


Again, we need to spend money on EQUIPMENT to do the assigned tasks, not
pretty fences, gatehouses and military fluff to impress the brass. If we
spent as much money on the radios as we do painting stones and raising
flowers and erecting new bureaucracies, we'd have the finest equipment in
the world!

Larry W4CSC