Distress, Urgency and Safety

It looks odd that a candidate for an Indian amateur licence is examined on the procedure a sinking ship uses to call for help. There are two reasons. The first is legal: Articles 30 to 33 bind every station, and No. 25.8 makes all pertinent provisions of the Regulations apply to amateur stations — you are not outside Chapter VII because you are a hobbyist. The second is practical. When a cyclone crosses the coast and the mobile towers go down, the licensed amateur with a charged battery may be the only working link out of a taluk, and the person at the other end of it will be using these words. This is not maritime trivia; it is the part of the syllabus that might one day matter more than the licence itself.

Three signals, three ranks

The whole of Chapter VII rests on a hierarchy of three signals. Learn the ladder first and the detail hangs off it.

All three words are French and are pronounced as French. MAYDAY is m’aider, help me. PAN PAN is panne, a breakdown — each word of the group pronounced as that French word. SECURITE is sécurité, roughly “say-cure-e-tay”. Each is spoken three times before the call that follows.

In radiotelegraphy the distress signal SOS is sent as one single character — three dots, three dashes, three dots, run together with no space between the letters. Sent that way it cannot be misheard as the separate letters S, O and S, and it cannot occur accidentally inside ordinary text.

Article 30 — the general provisions

Chapter VII is written around the GMDSS, the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System, whose functional requirements come from the SOLAS Convention. Modern alerting is largely digital, but the radiotelephone procedures below sit alongside it and are what the ASOC paper asks about. Article 30 also covers radiotelephony on 156.8 MHz, VHF Channel 16.

One provision of Article 30 deserves to be memorised as it stands, because it is the provision that reaches an amateur:

The provisions for the maritime mobile service are obligatory for all stations using the frequencies and techniques prescribed, and parallel obligations cover the aeronautical mobile service and land mobile stations in uninhabited, sparsely populated or remote areas — the category an inland Indian emergency most resembles.

Article 32 — distress

The Article separates three things that beginners run together:

• The distress alert — a digital selective calling transmission using the distress call format, or a distress message format relayed through a satellite.
• The distress call — the initial voice or text procedure.
• The distress message — the voice or text procedure that follows it.

Transmitting a distress alert or call means that a mobile unit or person is threatened by grave and imminent danger and requests immediate assistance. It may be sent only on the authority of the person responsible for the ship, aircraft or other vehicle. And distress communications have absolute priority over all other transmissions.

The distress call

Sent on Channel 16 or the appropriate distress frequency, and consisting of:

1. MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY
2. THIS IS
3. the name or call sign of the station in distress, spoken three times
4. the call sign or other identification
5. the MMSI, if the initial alert was sent by DSC

The distress message

Sent immediately after the call, and this is the part the examiner asks about, because the order is fixed:

The mnemonic taught everywhere is Mayday – Identity – Position – Nature – Assistance – Other. Note that position comes before the nature of the distress, which is the point on which the multiple-choice question usually turns.

Radiotelephone distress transmissions are made slowly and distinctly, each word clearly pronounced, using the phonetic alphabet and figure code of Appendix 14 where necessary — which is what the phonetics drill is for. A position read out fast over a noisy channel is a position nobody can act on.

What you must do when you hear one

This is the question most likely to appear in some form, and the answer is not “answer it”.

1. Stop transmitting immediately on any frequency where your transmission could interfere with the distress traffic. RR No. 32.4 obliges every station that receives a distress alert or call on MF, HF or VHF to cease any transmission capable of interfering, and to continue listening.
2. Keep listening, and stay on frequency until the distress traffic is over or you are satisfied the emergency is being handled.
3. Write it down — time, frequency, identity, position, nature of the distress, assistance required. You may be the only person who heard it cleanly.
4. Acknowledge and offer help if no better-placed station appears to be doing so and you are in a position to be useful. Four stations answering at once simply drown the casualty, which is why answering is not automatic.
5. Do not interfere with the station controlling the distress traffic, and observe any silence imposed.

Relaying — MAYDAY RELAY

A station not itself in distress transmits a distress relay when the distress alert or call it has heard has not been acknowledged within five minutes by a coast station or another vessel (No. 32.17), or when it learns that the unit in distress cannot itself take part in the communications and further help is needed (No. 32.18).

The relay begins MAYDAY RELAY MAYDAY RELAY MAYDAY RELAY, then ALL STATIONS (or the coast station’s name) three times, then THIS IS and the relaying station’s name three times and its call sign; and it is followed by the distress message, repeating as much of the original as possible. The relaying station must make clear that it is not itself in distress — No. 32.19A is explicit about it, for the obvious reason that a rescue directed to your address helps nobody.

Silence, and the end of it

Distress traffic is controlled by the rescue co-ordination centre, the unit co-ordinating the search and rescue, or the coast station concerned. Any of them may impose silence on interfering stations. Four expressions belong to this stage, and the exam distinguishes them:

A station that sends a distress alert or call by mistake must cancel it, orally, on the same distress and safety frequency in the same band: ALL STATIONS three times, THIS IS, its name three times and call sign, then PLEASE CANCEL MY DISTRESS ALERT OF with the time in UTC — and must then keep watch on that band and answer anything said about it. False distress alerts are an infringement, and administrations must take all practicable steps to avoid even inadvertent ones.

Article 33 — urgency and safety

Urgency

The urgency signal consists of the words PAN PAN, each word pronounced as the French panne, transmitted three times before the call. It means the calling station has a very urgent message to transmit concerning the safety of a ship, aircraft or other vehicle, or the safety of a person, and it has priority over all other communications except distress.

The line between distress and urgency is the line between grave and imminent danger and serious but not immediate. A vessel taking water and going down is distress. A serious illness aboard, with the vessel in no danger, is urgency. Ashore, in Indian terms: a house collapsed with people trapped is distress; a road cut and a patient needing evacuation within the day is urgency.

The format is PAN PAN three times, ALL STATIONS (or the station addressed) three times, THIS IS, the calling station three times, then the message.

Safety

The safety signal consists of the word SECURITE, pronounced as in French, transmitted three times. It announces a message concerning an important navigational or important meteorological warning, and it has priority over everything except distress and urgency. In practice the safety call is made on a distress and safety calling frequency and the message itself is then passed on a working frequency — which is why the call so often ends LISTEN ON followed by that frequency.

The distress frequencies

Two figures matter for the exam, and the difference between them is the correction this lesson exists to make.

The amateur point

Everything above is maritime in origin. Here is where it lands on you.

No. 30.2 says that no provision of the Regulations prevents a station in distress from using any means at its disposal to attract attention, make known its position and obtain help. No. 25.3 permits international communications on behalf of third parties in case of emergencies or disaster relief. No. 25.9A encourages administrations to let amateur stations prepare for and meet communication needs in support of disaster relief. Put together, they mean that in a genuine emergency involving the immediate safety of life, an amateur station may depart from the normal limits of its authorisation — band, mode, power, and the third-party rule — to obtain or render help.

Two qualifications keep that from being a loophole. First, it lasts exactly as long as the emergency: the ordinary licence conditions return in force the moment it ends, and everything you did belongs in the log. Second, India’s standing third-party rule is narrower than the ITU permission and is what governs the planned, non-instantaneous case. Indian licence conditions forbid messages for or on behalf of third parties except on failure of normal telecommunication facilities, for natural calamities such as earthquake, flood, cyclone or widespread fire, where the message originates from and is addressed to a competent civil authority — a District Magistrate, Deputy Commissioner or Collector, or an officer authorised by one of them — and the licensee must inform the licensing authority by letter each time. The licence conditions lesson works through the wording.

The distinction to hold is this: No. 30.2 is for the moment of crisis, when a life is in immediate danger and there is no time to be tidy. The Indian third-party rule is for the days after, when relief traffic is being organised and there is a District Collector to route it through.