Procedures and Practical Operation - VHF

What you student's should be able to do / understand after the session:

Knowledge of:

  • How a UK callsign is issued, its format and purpose
  • How public correspondence calls are made
  • Some countries, including the UK, no longer offer public correspondence 

Understands:

  • Radio voice protocol including:

- listening before initiating a voice call

- appropriate number of times to repeat your own identify and the identity of the vessel you are calling depending upon the situation

- how long to wait before repeating a call

- what action to take if a call is not answered

- what action to take if you are not certain that a call was intended for you

- what action to take if a call is from a station whose identification you did not hear

  • when and how voice and DSC transmissions should be tested

Can:

  • Decide when a Routine call is appropriate
  • Can construct and send a variety of Routine calls to another vessel on CH16 and transfer to a working channel
  • Can use correct procedure for Routine calls and messages
  • Can send a  radio check request to an appropriate station

DSC Distress, Urgency and Safety communication procedures

Protection of distress frequencies

  • Avoiding harmful interference
  • Transmissions during distress traffic 
  • Prevention of unauthorised transmissions
  • Test protocols and procedures
  • Avoidance or transmissions in VHF guard bands
  • Procedures to follow when a false or inadvertent Distress Alert is transmitted

Alerting, communication and locating signals

Radio Checks:

Modern radio equipment is more robust and may only need to be tested following maintenance work, at the start of a season or if there is any reason to believe that there may be an issue. The UK Coastguard recommends using another vessel, a marina or the National Coastwatch Institution (NCI) https://www.nci.org.uk/ on CH65 for routine radio checks.