Urgency and Safety
DSC can also be used in situations which do not warrant a full-blown distress alert, to draw attention to Panpan or Securitay messages.
A DSC urgency call is equivalent to the proword Panpan: it means “I have a very urgent message to transmit concerning the safety of a mobile unit or person”.
A DSC safety call is equivalent to the proword Securitay: it means “I have an important navigational or meteorological warning to transmit”.
Unlike a DSC distress alert, a DSC urgency or safety call contains no information other than the MMSI of the station transmitting it and the working channel that will be used for a subsequent voice message, so it must always be followed up immediately by a Panpan or Securitay message by voice.
Sending an urgency or safety call
There are no dedicated “urgency” or “safety” buttons on a DSC controller, so the procedure for sending an urgency or safety call is, in some respects, more like that required to send a routine call. Just as for a routine call, the exact sequence of buttons to press varies from make to make and model to model, but a typical sequence is something like this:-
1. Press <Call> to show the DSC menu on the screen.
2. Select “All ships” from the list of available call types (Individual; Group; All ships; Distress). Press <Enter> to confirm your selection, and reveal the next menu.
3. Select “Urgency” or “Safety”. Press <Enter> to confirm your selection, and reveal the next menu.
4. Select a working channel (usually Channel 16).
5. Press <Call> and <Enter> together to transmit the DSC call.
6. Follow up with a voice call and message using the Panpan or Securitay procedure (see pages 52-54).
This is included as an example only, but is based on the procedure for the Class D Icom DS100 DSC controller. Other makes and models are different:-
On the Class D Simrad DSC 1400, for instance, the call types offered are Routine, Safety, Urgency and Group. Having selected Urgency or Group, there are no more options: pressing the <Enter> key immediately sends the call to all ships with Channel 16 as the working channel.
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