You wouldn’t think so to hear them tell it, unless their advertising has changed in the last twenty years.
Side note: The US Navy used to have an installation (maybe still does) with IIRC a sixty foot diameter turntable covered with lead sheeting to approximate the electrical characteristics of salt water. They used it with little model ships to optimize the near-field characteristics of having bunches of antennas on board.
Marketing is the key dear Watson…
Ashore an effective RF earth or ground system can be created by burying radials. The more radials buried, generally the better. One approach is to bury between 50 and 100 wires of length up to 3λ/2. A general rule of thumb that is often used is that the more radials the better, and it is better to have more short radials than a few long ones.
With a quarter wave length antenna the aerial current is maximum at the earth connection. The power loss caused by a poor antenna RF ground connection is of particular importance as a poor ground results in real power losses. Due to the small size of the Dynaplate the losses will be substantial.
A painted steel ship’s hull presents no earthing problem as the iron hull and sea water with the paint as dielectric forms a large capacitor which lets the RF energy pass with minimal losses.
Just an update. I emailed the USCG and thus far have received this reply:
Good day,
This request is documented in CGFIXIT as Incident Number INC000003041455.
It has been directed to the Technical Team for further review.
If you have any further questions or concerns please call 1-855-CGFIXIT (1-855-243-4948) choosing option 3 for OSC Application Support.
Another update.
The USCG emailed me back and said that this problem belongs to another part of the Coast Guard. I went through and found the link that listed the erroneous form, showed them where to find it on the website. All of this took hours of my life to pinpoint the web addresses and send it in. Then they said it does not belong to our complaints if you cant find it were not fixing it.
Luckily as a mariner lots of my life has been wasted so this was a very small percentage of wasted life.
Per 46 CFR of today:
§ 121.510 Recommended emergency broadcast instructions.
The following emergency broadcast instructions, when placed on a placard, will satisfy the requirement contained in § 121.506 for an emergency broadcast placard:
(a) Emergency Broadcast Instructions.
(1) Make sure your radiotelephone is on.
(2) Select 156.8 MHz (channel 16 VHF) or 2182 kHz
do you ever get GMDSS in the USA??
???
What does that mean? The USCG monitors DSC and voice on VHF and HF.
once GMDSS came in many flag states said you are no longer required to maintain a watch on voice channels, why would you?
The ITC and IMO then flag states regs are not quite uniform as they should be.
Almost no country monitors HF voice any more.
Effective 1 August 2013, the U. S. Coast Guard terminated its radio guard of the international voice distress, safety and calling frequency 2182 kHz and the international digital selective calling (DSC) distress and safety frequency 2187.5 kHz. Additionally, marine information and weather broadcasts transmitted on 2670 kHz terminated concurrently.[6] The U. S. Coast Guard continues to monitor HF (4–22 MHz) marine distress/safety/calling voice and DSC frequencies.
4125 kHz Carrier frequency used to supplement 2 182 kHz for distress and safety. GMDSS distress and safety traffic by radiotelephony. May be used by aircraft to communicate with stations of the Maritime Mobile service for distress and safety purposes, including SAR.
4177∙5 kHz GMDSS distress and safety traffic by NBDP.
4207∙5 kHz GMDSS distress and safety calls using DSC.
In simple terms, NBDP (Narrow Band Direct Printing) is a telex system such as the TOR telex system. A way to communicate with text rather than by voice. It is said that NBDP was introduced in the GMDSS to help seafarers whose first language was not English. They did not have to speak to broadcast their distress message, instead they could type and send.
I never heard of distress calls on SITOR??? Is that a thing?
TOR or SITOR is a messaging service only. I deliberately wrote ‘such’ to indicate that it also is a direct printing system but it uses totally different frequencies and unlike NBDP it has nothing to do with GMDSS