Solent coastguard - muppetry at its finest

It does seem to be a problem. I found myself shouting the radio at the weekend listening to them dealing with a pan pan. Asking the same questions two or three times, and asking seemingly irrelevant questions. Just seemed a million miles away from how Solent CG of old used to deal with similar calls. Hopefully it's just teething troubles and things will settle down quickly.
 
Whitelighter said:
Roger is R in the old phonetic alphabet. 'R' was transmitted to mean received, hence 'Roger' means 'I have received and understood your transmission'

Wilco as you correctly say is short for 'Will comply'

Roger, Wilco is unnecessary but not incorrect. 'I have received your message and will comply'.

And its not what I have heard in war movies, its what I have heard from professionals using radio communications on a more regular basis than a sunday sailor
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I believe R in the phonetic alphabet is Romeo. (NATO anyway)

Romeo wilko does sound like a porn name though :):):)
 
It is now. But originally it was Roger.

ICAO unified the alphabet in 1956 with the one we use today. Prior to that there were a number throughout history but the most prevalent was the USA military/RAF/RN alphabet which the letter R was designated with Roger (previous WW1 alphabets had used Robert).

When the ICAO alphabet became the standard certain phraseology stuck.

Roger for 'R' or 'received' was one such example
 
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Back on thread...

Agree based on the delta between the quality of Falmouth and Solent Coastguards; its tangible.

Recently experienced pan pans going out on both and I'd rather be in the hands of the guys in the South West any day.

I hope very much that we don't go the same way as SG....

Not sure I ever heard the term WILCO being taught or used when in took my city and guilds (naval), back in the day, that kind of ages me! Sounds very Crab Fat to me....
 
Nigelpickin said:
Back on thread...

Agree based on the delta between the quality of Falmouth and Solent Coastguards; its tangible.

Recently experienced pan pans going out on both and I'd rather be in the hands of the guys in the South West any day.

I hope very much that we don't go the same way as SG....

Not sure I ever heard the term WILCO being taught or used when in took my city and guilds (naval), back in the day, that kind of ages me! Sounds very Crab Fat to me....
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I was interested to learn that Roger and Wilco were acceptable. When I did my VHF certif in the 80's the instructor told us in no uncertain terms that use of "wartime radio speak" such as "Wilco" was most certainly not acceptable. Can't recall if Roger was included in his diatribe or not.

As an aside, I'd be tempted to put out a pan pan medico if I heard Roger Roger over the airways :)
 
In Aviation RT if you say "wilco" you don't need to say "roger" as well - "roger" is redundant, as how could you indicate 'will comply' if you had not received the message? Rather like the phrase "advance warning', after all what is a warning if not in advance? I think that SC is becoming the marine version of 124.75 London Information - a perfectly amiable bunch of folk to talk to, where the more voluble pilots go to talk about their lives, but not to be confused with something useful.
 
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Nigelpickin said:
I hope very much that we don't go the same way as SG....
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I believe Falmouth is staying more or less as-is, because of their specialist role as the UK's 406MHz beacon ground station and the global coordination operations that sometimes result. Thank **** for that really; realistically the Fareham call-centre folk can mostly deal with answering a VHF call and phoning the RNLI, even if they don't inspire much confidence while doing it. But can you imagine them trying to coordinate EPIRB signals, half a broken satphone call, Inmarsat emails to the Uzbek crew of a Panamanian freighter, HF radio, perhaps involving the Ham world if appropriate, persuading the Sierra Leonian Navy to get off their arses and do a search, and all the other factors that might be involved when something goes wrong for a British yacht on the far side of the world? What Falmouth do in such cases requires a hell of a lot of knowledge, contacts in other organisations, and understanding of how various maritime worlds work, and can't be recreated from scratch if they sacked the existing team.

You guys tootling around in VHF range of Pendennis fortunately get to keep your real coastguards off the back of this work :)

Pete
 
What amazes me are the amount of radio check dickheads wasting there time and rarely a please or a thanks after a report back , not on in my book. Pay a marine electronic company to test your signal once a year if your not sure how your set performs.
 
It may have been a trainee? We heard Solent CG conduct a very professional S&R operation under quite difficult conditions just a few weeks ago. A yacht was taking on water in the Solent area and did not know its position with any accuracy. They apparently did not have any working GPS and were short handed. They did have several flares on board and the CG first issues an all-ships asking that all ships should post lookouts, then got the casualty to fire off parachute flares a few minutes apart. After the second or third they got a couple of sightings and were able to direct the lifeboat in. When the RNLI got there, they didn't have sufficient pumping capacity to keep the yacht afloat, so the CG directed in another lifeboat. They finally stood down the all-ships when the boat was safe and in shallow water.
 
volvopaul said:
What amazes me are the amount of radio check dickheads wasting there time and rarely a please or a thanks after a report back , not on in my book. Pay a marine electronic company to test your signal once a year if your not sure how your set performs.
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Since virtually every radio installed these days is DSC, learn to use the test call functionality and don't bother anybody.
 
maby said:
It may have been a trainee?
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Certainly they ought to be taking quite a few on, since I believe they didn't manage to hire as many as their plan stated during the changeover. And to be fair, a yacht with a fouled rudder off Cowes is a relatively easy task to give a beginner. But the old control room would have had the rest of the watch listening in and on hand to prompt; in the new one they each appear to be on their own.

maby said:
We heard Solent CG conduct a very professional S&R operation under quite difficult conditions just a few weeks ago.
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Out of interest, was the operator male or female? Just going by the voices, I think there's one lady from Lee-on-Solent now working at Fareham. I don't recognise any of the men.

Pete
 
prv said:
Out of interest, was the operator male or female? Just going by the voices, I think there's one lady from Lee-on-Solent now working at Fareham. I don't recognise any of the men.

Pete
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I really don't remember - we were sailing in through the tail end of a Force7/8 and had our hands full!
 
maby said:
Since virtually every radio installed these days is DSC, learn to use the test call functionality and don't bother anybody.
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I always want to know what Skip does when CG say "weak and unreadable.." which is at least 30pct of the time.
 
southseaian said:
You do seem to have an axe to grind although not knowing your history I can only guess why.
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I can assure you of no connection to Solent Coast Guard or any members of their team, former or current.

My comments are merely observations whilst I'm out on the water. When you find yourself shouting at the radio asking why time is being wasted or why certain things haven't been done something is surely wrong.

I love seeing professionals at work, that sense of awe. I hear what has been said about there being professionals waiting in the wings should a serious situation arise but when simple tasks are consistently getting fluffed there is no feeling of confidence.

cards on the table do you have any links to Solent Coast Guard, however slight ?

Henry :)
 
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