490 Navtex

[Budgie]

The 490 Navtex service has been unreliable for some weeks now. Recently cruising around the North Channel and the Irish Sea, receiving the Portpatrick transmitter, we only received the sections up to - usually - Mull of Kintyre. The rest of the forecast, together with the 3 day outlook was garbled or lost.

A couple of weeks ago I phoned Falmouth Coastguard, who are apparently responsible for the service, to be told that they were working on it. However, although the transmission times have changed, the results have not.

Having invested in a new Navtex (a Nav6 plus), solely to be able to dual watch 490/518, I am feeling somewhat aggrieved. Why is this problem taking so long to sort out? Who is doing the sorting? How about explaining what the problem is?

"HMCG" might be able to shed some light.

P.S. The above winge does not imply that I am not grateful for our otherwise excellent Coatguard Service.

 

[HMCG]

Sorry that you are having problems. There have been soe problems with both 490 and 518 in the past few months. As far as I am aware it has been a problem with the link between our station and the transmitting sites. I am night shift tomorrow (monday) I will investigate what is happening and will report back.


Remember a VHF can save your life.

 

[Budgie]

HMCG - Thanks for the reply.

Do I understand that this is purely a Portpatrick problem?

 

[HMCG]

I am still looking into it at the moment but I do know that we have had problems with all of our transmitters recently. I will keep you updated.


Remember a VHF can save your life.

 

[Budgie]

Any update on this?

 

[HMCG]

I am still waiting on a definitive answer myself. The week I did notice that we were receiving some corruption on navtex. I checked with other stations and they were all fine. I was speaking to clyde though and they did say that a couple of weeks ago they did have a serious problem with portpatrick which was sending rubish but that has now been fixed as far as they can see ie they are receiving fine now all the time.

I am still trying to get to the bottom of it and will try to keep you updated.



Remember a VHF can save your life.

 

[ParaHandy]

Hadn't noticed this before but right at the end of all 490khz transmissions is a short notice advising that 490 is "unreliable". It's fine from the Niton aerial in the South but not from some of the Northern transmitters. The problem stems, apparently, from when MCA updated their software which somehow manages to corrupt transmissions. No doubt all IT bods on this forum will go tut tut, never happens to me etc etc.........!!

 

[Budgie]

I finally tracked down the gentleman at Falmouth Coastguard who deals with this. He advised me that ICS, who provide the software, would be installing an update this week and all should be well. The problem was found to be the length of the broadcast.

 

[ParaHandy]

Re: 518 Navtex

An old problem is re-appearing.........Sunday's Niton 1900z transmission overran by a thumping 2 minutes and Oostende's 1910z broadcast of 4 minutes got chopped to 2!. However, the CG did put the weather info at the front so it came through clearly. But, very frustrating, the early morning transmission at 0700z had the weather at the end and it got wiped out after 7 minutes (at 0707z) by interference. I do wonder whether this is happening on a regular basis (it is with me) which is why one poster hereabouts said that he/she only receives one weather transmission per day?

 

[milltech]

I have a customer in Buckie on the Moray Firth who keeps his boat on the West Coast. He wants me to buy his Nasa 490 aerial back because it doesn't work, it's been back to Nasa who say it's OK. If it doesn't work I'll buy it back in the cause of customer relations, but can I have an official answer? Is it him or is it you?

What is your view of the service level at the moment?

Thanks
John
www.allgadgets.co.uk


John

 

[Budgie]

Is your customer receiving any 490 data at all? If no data at all it must be a problem with set/installation. If he is receiving a truncated inshore waters report from Portpatrick it may well be the HMCG problem which should be resolved this week.

If possible try to watch at transmission time to see what is happening.

Falmouth Coastguard control transmissions - tel 01326 317575

 

[JerryHawkins]

From my MCA contact

I have a contact in the MCA who is responsible (in some way) for the NAVTEX service. The following is the email reply I received from him today after I asked what was going on:

"We are having problems with a time out problem on the 490 service. Our engineers have identified the problem and getting a fix to all 3 sites asap. The problem appears when the message is in excess of 8 mins, which of course the the inshore tends to be about 10-11 mins. The worst site is PP. We put the warning message out to warn everyone for the times the message exceeds the 8 mins. Niton is generally ok. I am assured the fix is imminent."

Thought this may be of interest to you all!

Cheers,

Jerry

 

[ParaHandy]

Re: the Pink palace

Once heard the MCA HQ being likened to Gen Galtieri's palace.........they can be paranoid about the strangest things and quite ruthless too........