"Can I have a radio check please"......

[Guest]

\"Can I have a radio check please\"......

No wonder the coastguard call us WAFIs'(Wind Assisted Flippin' Idiots). Any comments?

 

[Guest]

Re: \"Can I have a radio check please\"......

Loud and clear over the other traffic.!!!! I think Solent Coast Guard are very tolerant.... You would have thought that in this day & age of wizzy electronics that VHF manufacturers would build in a self test mechanism... but one can always check with a marina or a friend at a prearranged time, n'est pas?

Pete

 

[Guest]

Sad but true...

Both the MCA and RNLI promote the checking of radio transmit before setting out.

True it doesn't have to be on Ch16, it could be 80, 37 etc.

But Ch 16 / full power is what you are going to rely on in extremis.

Mind you, the coastguard request filing passage plans when sailing round the corner for lunch, arguing that you may be the ones who could collect off-shore lilo's etc. whilst there.

Must remember to start doing radio checks and passage plans......

 

[Guest]

Passage Plans to HMCG

Filing passage plans isn't that difficult is it and if the Coastguard know someone is in a particular area they can try and deploy them to help in an emergency.

Everyone has seen the RAF "scrambling" helicopters within seconds on the telly but try 0200hrs and it can take up to 45 minutes just to get a chopper airborne!

Add on the flight time and you can be close to the coast and still have an hour to wait before help arrives.

Consider a boat on passage with a GPS (accurate to +/- 5 metres) and a MAYDAY transmitted by a DSC VHF linked to a GPS of similar accuracy and you have something really useful.

Coastguard asks passage maker where he is - answer to within 5 metres. Coastguard can tell passage maker where problem is - accuracy to within 5 metres.

Even my old pig of a boat can go five miles in an hour and navigate with a handheld GPS to within 5 metres of where I want to be.

It would be nice to be bobbing around in the water with the thought that the two passage makers appearing over the horizon were approaching so accurately that being run down was a greater danger than dying of hypothermia!!

Best regards )

Ian D

 

[Guest]

Why bother with VHF at all?

Let us say that the boat's will do about five knots, most of the time (a good deal less, straight to windward!) That means one hour to cover five miles, or, to be more practical, forty minutes to cover two and a half miles, allowing time for faffing about altering course, plotting, and so on. That is about the distance of the horizon from the cockpit.

I think a boat might be an effective sort of vessel to intervene over about that distance, in which case we are talking about the visual range of a flare.

Any further than that and the RNLI and the helicopter will get there quicker.

My approach is to leave the radio turned off and give the professionals some peace. Besides, I go to sea for peace and quiet, not to have half an ear on a loudspeaker.

 

[Guest]

One can always tell..

Who sails in the Solent, and who sails in other places. The Solent's air waves are full of radio checks and requests for the weather. Sail in other places, and suddenly the VHF is silent for hours on end. Anyway, in other places, listening to CH 67 is often quite interesting as well.
Colin H.