Lifeline experience: Could not tune to channel to 3A, boat was not monitoring 16

[GregSaiz]

I had an opportunity to use my Lifeline in a non-emergency incident during a recent live aboard trip in the Philippines. We were diving in groups from a chase boat and our group was in a ripping current. We surfaced to find the swells were picking up and the chase boat was not on our position. We were still in visual range of the main vessel, however, they could not hear our surface whistles and seeing our SMB would be difficult. Earlier, I found the Lifeline could not be tuned to the preferred ship-to-ship channel utilized by the boat crew, channel 3A. Although it was not yet an emergency situation, everyone in our group was getting a bit nervous as we were going the wrong direction in rough seas. Since we were in a very remote location, I decided to hail the boat on the distress channel 16. The radio seemed to perform as expected but no response was received. We later found the ships handheld radios were locked to channel 3A so they would not auto-switch to distress traffic on channel 16. A couple of observations and lessons learned:
1) I'm not sure why the Lifeline does not allow a user to tune chat to channel 3A. It may be a restricted channel in the US but so are many of the other channels users are allowed to manually select. It was apparently okay to use 3A in our location for ship-to-ship communication.
2) You should triple check with your boat that all radios onboard are setup to monitor channel 16. I didn't have an opportunity to speak with the captain about this but will certainly follow up.

Bottom line, the chase boat saw our SMB and we were picked up. I can only assume if we were swept out to sea, someone would have tuned to channel 16 as they conducted a search.

 

[Wookie]

You might also ask the boat captain (if language isn't a barrier) if the radio on the boat is set up to receive DCS radio traffic. I thought I was until I read and commented on a thread here on SB and someone PM'd me to ask if I was set up to receive DSC calls. I responded that "of course I am", and I had a chat with the mate about it later. He allowed as to how we had never received a DSC call while he was on watch, but he got them all the time on the other liveaboard he works on. I checked a little deeper into mine, and we weren't in fact set up to receive, only to transmit. I have since rectified the situation, but not all radios are properly set up.

Had you had an emergency and pushed the little red panic button, the liveaboard's radios would automatically have switched to monitor the DSC call. If the liveaboard's radios were properly set up. I have not found a way to test the receive feature yet, and I still haven't received a distress call.

 

[GregSaiz]

Well, for liability reasons I don't want to admit to activating DCS but lets just assume I did. I know the handheld radios used on chase boats are not DCS compatible and the captain may not have been on the bridge where the DCS alarm would have sounded (had I actually activated it).

 

[Wookie]

Remember, you're in the PI. Probably no Rescue 21 system to hear you. If the Captain hears you, all the better....

 

[GregSaiz]

After a bit of hunting around with the Mac software package, I realized you can add channels to the default list of tunable stations for the chat button. This is done under "Advanced>>Customize Channels>>Select Preferred Channels". I've just updated my Chat Channel list with all channels other than 16 so I won't have this issue again.

RTFM.

EDIT: Not that easy. Channel 3A is not allowed for US based Lifeline profiles so I'd need to change my location before or during a trip, then download the new channels for chat.