Ch16 Open mics - a plea

chanelyacht

chanelyacht

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Posting this on all three fora so as not to intend blame to any one type of boat...

Please...

Keep an eye on your radio gear. Each day over this weekend so far we have had persistent carriers / open mics on Ch16 - twice making comms very difficult in genuine mayday incidents.

Fully understand these things are accidental, but they can wipe out whole areas for us and weaker transmissions from people in real trouble can easily be blocked.

Many thanks ;)
 
Last weekend I heard a radio check call. CG said "your talk button seems to be sticking perhaps you could look at it" (or polite words to that effect). The boat called called straight back "Is that better?" CG "no".

Sometimes the CG needs to tell plonkers what they don't realise for themselves. You are so polite some people miss the point. Keep up the good work.
 
MoodySabre said:
Sometimes the CG needs to tell plonkers what they don't realise for themselves.
Click to expand...

The problem of course being that you can't talk to someone whose radio is stuck on transmit.

A couple of years ago on the East Coast, I hear they got Jeremy Vine or whoever on Radio Two to put out a request. They could hear his programme in the background of the stuck mic, so rang up the BBC and got him to ask anyone listening in a boat in such and such an area to check their VHF. It worked.

The technical solution is for radios to automatically stop transmitting (and beep, flash a message on screen, etc) after so many minutes continuous transmission. No normal use involves one-way sending for extended periods - particularly since I believe the rules require you to listen briefly every couple of minutes of a long transmission anyway. I think some radios already have this, it just takes a long time for the older ones to fade out of use.

Pete
 
Reading the title of the thread I was alarmed that perhaps we were being invited to play BGT on the airwaves. Couldn't think how to hold the transmit button whilst playing my accordion...

I would certainly urge everyone to replace the mic in its clip, to prevent junk on the chart table from jamming it, and look to see the transmission light on the radio is off after use.

Rob.
 
Why does this happen?
well, my handheld is ridiculously easy to accidentally switch on.
Entel 640
If left loose in a bag and knocked it will turn on and as most radios default to ch 16 its no surprise when carriers are heard.
For this reason i now set the radio so it powers up on a private channel.
Ive always thought it was a bit of a design fault with a radio which otherwise is very good at what it does.
It would be very easy for a manufacture to set a time out of say 60s seconds to a radio.
 
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