Ship's position, at least once each day.
Daily, weekly and monthly tests and checks of equipment (see
Appendix VIII).
- The outcome of test calls exchanged with other ships/coast stations.
A record of important incidents connected with the radio service,
including brief details of:
GMDSS equipment breakdown, or serious malfunction.
Any breakdown of communications with Coast Stations in the
maritime mobile radio service, or with Coast Earth Stations in the
maritime mobile (Inmarsat) satellite service.
Adverse propagation conditions - including static, noise or other
interference which affects the radio watch or otherwise interferes
with normal communications.
Serious breaches of radio procedures by other stations.
- Problems with coast stations regarding, for example, non-delivery
of messages or disagreement about charges.
Equipment, channels and frequencies for the distress & safety watch
- Vessels in Sea Area Al must maintain DSC watch on VHF Ch70.
Vessels in Sea Area A2 must maintain DSC watch on VHF Ch70 and
on 2187.5kHz (MF).
Vessels in Sea Area A3, in addition to the VHF /MF DSC watch above,
should keep watch on the Inmarsat EGC (SafetyNET) service (for
SAR information shore-to-ship); 0 R may keep watch using HF DSC
on the 8MHz Distress and Safety alerting frequency and one other
HF DSC Distress and Safety alerting frequency for shore-to-ship DSC
alerts (in addition to the ship-to-ship watch using VHF and MF DSC).
Vessels in Sea Area A4 must keep DSC Watch on VHF Ch70; MF
2187.5kHz, and on the 8MHz DSC Distress & Safety Alerting
frequency (8414.5kHz) , and one other HF DSC Distress & Safety
Alerting frequency (Appendix IX).
Vessels must also keep watch, 'whenever practicable', on VHF
Ch16, for voice Distress Calls and Messages from non-GMDSS vessels
(untill Feb. 2005); and on VHF Chl3 for voice calls relating to 'intership
safety of navigation'
Preparing for sea
One of the responsibilities of the 'person responsible for radio
communications in an emergency' is to know what shore-based facilities
are available, at all points of the voyage, for sending and receiving
MARINE COMMUNICATIONS 25
