MRCCs - Please give positions relative to fixed point and lat/long

[pcatterall]

Agree with this 100% another aspect of it is 'a check against gross error' Coords, especially transmitted by phone or radio then written down are easilly...misread/misheard/misrecorded (3 potential misses!!)
a simple check as indicated could save a lot of time/money/lives.
I spent 2 months surveying a proposed sewage discharge site off Tenby then discovered that the original site centre coords had been wrongly passed by telephone.... some red faces!!

Well done ..good result

 

[alant]

When in (lets say) the Solent, hearing a Mayday/Pan Pan from a deck speaker which gives lat/Long, doesn't, as you say, allow most yachties to quickly work out if the casualty is off Portland/Poole/Chichester, unless plotted on some sort of chart. Giving a location from a landmark, is obviously easier to understand.

However, these messages are aimed mainly at commercial traffic, often well offshore & nowhere near a landmark. Keeping messages in the same format presumably makes it easier for different nationalities/languages, to get it right.

Giving a position as something off 'Cape St Vincent' or alternatively 'Cabo Vinciente' may perhaps lead to confusion.

 

[jh2005]

I think I've heard the Channel Navigational Information Service broadcasts in the Dover Strait TSS use range & bearing for positions of ships in the traffic lanes, so this format may already be in use - can anyone confirm?

 

[hlb]

The other complete waste of time, is the rattling off, of gun fax, sub fax and navel exersizes, in lat and long. Even with pen and paper to hand, it's imposible to write them down.

 

[rickp]

They were giving bearing and range from certain buoys over the weekend and followed it with the lat & long. Certainly it wa easier to use the former when checking the chart....

Rick