OK, that must be country specific. Distress calls in my part og the world
are being taken very seriously. So seriously that if someone press the
button without reason that are to pay a 1000-5000 USD fee for sending out a
helicopter and a few lifeboats to see. Further, if you do send out digital
distress, it will wake up all the other gmdss radios making then awful
noisy. CG or not. Many people (among other commercial ships) will notice
that....



I could be just because I'm from an old sailor nation, but I think you
should do something to fix your CG problem.



However I do agree than an epirb is the most valuable security device.
Worldwide ....



Bjarke




"Larry" wrote in message
...
"Bjarke M. Christensen" bjarkeNG@grevestrand_punktum_danmark wrote in
:

But if 'emergency' is a concern to you, you should have the distress
function that is only availbale on marine ssb's.



Useless. The half-assed DSC/GMDSS implementation on pleasure craft
marine HF is damned near useless.

If he's going to spend money on EMERGENCY radios, he needs a 406 Mhz
EPIRB with its OWN GPS receiver built inside it, not some bogus GPS-ready
he hooks his GPS to. You don't even have to press the button, just let
it float and off she goes. They ALL pay attention to the 406 EPIRB going
off.

Hell, CG doesn't pay attention to boys screaming for help after their
stupid father/uncle rammed his sailboat into the Charleston Jetties.
There's no doubt they are in trouble. I've listened to the tape the
local radio station FORCED them to release under Freedom of Information
Act. How any CG watchstander could have just let them all drown for fear
of getting the boat crew out of their racks has never left my mind. How
soon the rest of the world forgets the "Morning Dew" incident.

The cure for this is 406 EPIRB notifying the big guns who are NOT afraid
of waking up the CG to do something and have the horsepower to do it. HF
is DOOMED. All the commercial stations that DID do most of the
listening, except for the Alaskans I'm going to get lambasted by for
saying it, are gone! Try it for yourselves! Switch to one of the CG
frequencies and CALL 'EM. I did. On the 5th frequency, I FINALLY got
ONE CG radio operator who was awake. I pointedly asked him why noone but
him was monitoring those other 4 frequencies. He didn't know.

I'm well versed in time-of-day HF propagation, the physics of HF. I've
been a ham using it since 1957. Right now, the bands are in awful shape,
the sunspot cycle near its low. 150 watts into all that rigging doesn't
make the trip very well in these conditions. You're much better off with
an Iridium phone so you can call 'em on the landline!

Larry W4CSC and other fine old calls since 1957.
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