DSC

[lustyd]

The new simplified streamlined system to be, 'if you hear a DSC alarm, somebody nearby is facing death'.

Set your radio up so only emergencies beep. Your poor setup doesn't make the technology useless.

To answer the OP, yes I use it all the time to see a pin on my chartplotter where the Mayday or PanPan is. Far easier to determine if I'm close and can help than looking at the radio or listening to the whole Mayday only to find out it's 2 hours away.

I've also used it to request a position from friends boats without calling them and without them having to do anything. Again, pin on my chart is very handy.

 

[Roberto]

Apart from distress, I think DSC fits well the nice to have category.
I use it to contact specific ships (through integrated vhf/ais radio), whatever the mcga advice may be about using vhf for collision avoidance; send random "position queries" with friends' boats mmsi to see if they are around, two way position reports/queries with the portable dsc on the dinghy, essentially. Nice to have

 

[Daydream believer]

Being single handed I have my radio on 16 in the cabin where I can hear it from the cockpit. If it is relevant to me I turn on my hand held VHF & listen or reply. If it is a DSC I ignore it. Trouble is that often I am unable to climb below to press the button, to set it back to 16. ( I rarely go below en route , I just cannot move about in the violent motion & get seasick too quick) However, it swops my VHF to another channel making my VHF useless for hearing calls on 16. Very annoying.

 

[R.Ems]

Set your radio up so only emergencies beep. Your poor setup doesn't make the technology useless...

Thank you for your polite and helpful suggestion.
I am fairly sure I did this years ago.

 

[KompetentKrew]

Have you (all) never had a DSC alert? We were sailing a charter boat some years ago and suddenly got this unexpected bleeping which we were perturbed might be something mechanically faulty. There had been no briefing about it. Eventually we tracked the "problem" down to the radio, read and dismissed the alert.

I'm convinced that DSC would be more useful if it had more than one "ringtone", the problem being that it always sounds like a fire alarm going off below.

If a skipper is unfamiliar with the radio (e.g. on a club or charter boat) they rush to deal with the alarm, and are glad just to have silenced it.

It's understandable that an SOS should have an alarming alarm sound, but I think regular DSC calls would be much better heeded if the radio made a "ring ring" noise when they were received.

In 2018 I sailed with a skipper who had just fitted a brand new DSC radio, and who was keen to try out his new toy. Offshore in the Gulf of Cádiz he tried calling various freighters spotted on AIS and none of them responded. Eventually he called one of them on channel 16 and asked if he could do a DSC radio test - "no problem" was the reply, and it was answered immediately. The same vessel had ignored his DSC call just minutes before!

My experience in the busy parts of the Med, around the Strait of Sicily, was that everyone called very concisely on channel 16 - "ship B, ship B, this is ship A" - "ship B" - "17 please".

 

[lustyd]

going off below

Move your electronics to the cockpit and this becomes much less of an issue. Even with a different ringtone, which I agree is a nice to have, you'd need to address the alert so having it at the helm either in the plotter or on the radio itself is a definite must have. Integrated in the plotter is the way to go though, then you get waypoints for emergencies or position requests of friends boats as well as a more simple interface to the system.

 

[Daydream believer]

Move your electronics to the cockpit and this becomes much less of an issue. Even with a different ringtone, which I agree is a nice to have, you'd need to address the alert so having it at the helm either in the plotter or on the radio itself is a definite must have. Integrated in the plotter is the way to go though, then you get waypoints for emergencies or position requests of friends boats as well as a more simple interface to the system.

There is nowhere in the cockpit of my 31 ft boat for a radio. Furthermore I would dislike the thought of integrating it with the plotter- even if I could. If the plotter went down --as one already has-- I would never want to risk the VHF going with it. For the same reason my autopilot is not connected to anything else & i am on my 7Th. Can you imagine the hassle that would cause me in rough weather?
I disconnect my plotter & put it below when I am not sailing. So the VHF connection would probably have to be disconnected as well. I do not even have a sensible place for an extension mike, as there are no side cubby holes. Most stuff ends up on the cockpit floor (sometimes covered in vomit ).

 

[awol]

There is nowhere in the cockpit of my 31 ft boat for a radio. Furthermore I would dislike the thought of integrating it with the plotter- even if I could. If the plotter went down --as one already has-- I would never want to risk the VHF going with it. For the same reason my autopilot is not connected to anything else & i am on my 7Th. Can you imagine the hassle that would cause me in rough weather?
I disconnect my plotter & put it below when I am not sailing. So the VHF connection would probably have to be disconnected as well. I do not even have a sensible place for an extension mike, as there are no side cubby holes. Most stuff ends up on the cockpit floor (sometimes covered in vomit ).

Your choice of vessel leaves me flummoxed! It won't heave to, it has no spaces in the cockpit for anything , has a motion that makes you sick, there is no integration of anything and you can't cope with rough weather without an autopilot. Maybe it's just not the right boat for you?

 

[chrisclin]

There were 2 All Stations calls from Aberdeen Coastguard today. Someone in the Forth was transmitting constantly on Ch16.
Presumably everyone except the culprit heard it and checked it wasn't them! The one person who it was addressed to couldn't have heard the message because they were transmitting.
Surely that was a classic case for using DSC? As I understand it the warble would have come in on Ch70 and they would have had to respond.
Maybe Aberdeen Coastguard didn't know how to make a DSC call. I haven't heard one for 20 years.

 

[Bilgediver]

Very true, (although Radio Check numpties give us all someone to sneer at..) but is a DSC message the best way to check your radio?
Correct me if I am wrong but a digital bleep message will often get through, when voice transmission is defeated by dodgy aerials, long range, interference or other problems?

It is better than voice as it also tests the digital side so you are testing the digital components also. Mind you I think some just like to hear their own voice as they monitor the voice test call on their hand held.

 

[mjcoon]

It is better than voice as it also tests the digital side so you are testing the digital components also. Mind you I think some just like to hear their own voice as they monitor the voice test call on their hand held.

Aren't they then liable to get a DJ's feedback screech?

 

[[3889]]

Bought my first fixed DSC in the early noughties. Keen to try it out I sent a digital call to Holyhead Coastguard with the intention of requesting a weather forecast which I did genuinely require. The response was a voice call on 16 asking vessel with MMSI XXXXXXXX to call them on 16. I rang them on my mobile. Never bothered with DSC since.

 

[Spirit (of Glenans)]

Aren't they then liable to get a DJ's feedback screech?

I would favour the feedback from a live band, as having once been a professional musician, I have always deplored the notion of dancing to mere records?

 

[jdc]

I do use DSC. I used to use it to call the CG, but it became clear that they were unfamiliar or untrained with it and couldn't set channel etc so I reverted to voice. But with friends who are sailing their own boats I have a short address book and dial them up. The technique is to change to an inter-ship channel which is quiet, then do an individual station call selecting that channel.

Works brilliantly and avoids irritating others. The charter sea-angling boats down here in Cornwall call each other every few mins - always the same 3 or 4 boats calling each other, and the called boat never suggesting a channel so the interchange takes 2x as long as it need be - and if they don't get through the first time, they call again after 30 secs or so, occasionally across the MSI broadcast or a silence mayday. I don't want to do that when I'm only suggesting a lunch-time anchorage and asking if someone's got more tonic water, so DSC works for me for the unlikely situation of purely social and so unimportant calls.

 

[steveeasy]

Done the course and frequently receive the audible alert. That is were it stops. I go to the radio expecting a DSC message. nothing. had a few sunday when Channal 16 was far too busy. Collisions, head injuries, sun stroke and one boat lost a crew member and luckily another boat plucked him from the water. Not sure if the boat he fell from had to time to pick him up. all was well.
Steveeasy

 

[Slowboat35]

And there I was thinking I was a complete unprofessional ignoramous or dinosaur never having used DSC despite trying to remind myself how it works evey year for the best part of a decade - and never getting to use it. Despite continuous conventional use of 16 and various other VTS/harbour channels where DSC is not appropriate.
So I gather virtually no-one else uses it either.
So what the digamma is it there for?

 

[Tranona]

And there I was thinking I was a complete unprofessional ignoramous or dinosaur never having used DSC despite trying to remind myself how it works evey year for the best part of a decade - and never getting to use it. Despite continuous conventional use of 16 and various other VTS/harbour channels where DSC is not appropriate.
So I gather virtually no-one else uses it either.
So what the digamma is it there for?

For typical leisure yotties a solution looking for a problem. Events have overtaken it. Conceived before mobile phones and the internet was even thought of, and years in the making because of the need to get international agreement to standards. Remember 40 or even 30 years ago VHF was the means of communication at sea and connections with the land had to go through link calls. The idea of DSC was to get away from the ponderous routines that dated from even earlier time and kind of mimic the simpler routines of telephone calls. Communication technology moved on and while there is still a place for it in commercial shipping it really adds little for leisure sailors most of whom never even use VHF on a regular or frequent basis.

 

[R.Ems]

It is better than voice as it also tests the digital side so you are testing the digital components also. Mind you I think some just like to hear their own voice as they monitor the voice test call on their hand held.

Thank you for the answer, but since I want to test my aerial, coax etc, voice is a harder test than DSC. The chances of a bird hitting the aerial must be 100 times greater than a mystery failure of the DSC chip in the radio itself.
I tried to convey this point in my second sentence, but I must have been unclear.

(I've had a masthead aerial broken by a bird, but it's very easy to solder one together in an hour or two, from a wire coathanger and a stick, and hoy it up the flag halliard. Just as good as the £70 Salty John version which got knocked off!)

 

[steveeasy]

Haveing done my Radio Certificate only 2 years ago, I can tell you that the course fully focuses on DSC. I have little understanding of it though. Ive done so many courses over the years and this year alone done 5 days of CPC training. 4 weeks of NPTC courses and I can honestly say the Radio course has been the only one I failed on first attempt. it was a tangled mess of interpretation. I got through the second time .

Steveeasy

 

[dgadee]

Haveing done my Radio Certificate only 2 years ago, I can tell you that the course fully focuses on DSC. I have little understanding of it though. Ive done so many courses over the years and this year alone done 5 days of CPC training. 4 weeks of NPTC courses and I can honestly say the Radio course has been the only one I failed on first attempt. it was a tangled mess of interpretation. I got through the second time .

Steveeasy

Yes, over complicated examinaion. I organized one a few years ago under the old system. Maybe 4 hours in all with 25 attendees. Course examiner/RYA did well financially.

The crew refuses to do the current one. Too expensive and too much involved. So much for the system improving safety onboard.