Marine Frequencies

General questions on scanning from 30 to 3000Mhz. Not sure what you can receive in your area? Here's the place to ask!

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radiotech
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Location: Geelong - Australia
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Marine Frequencies

Post by radiotech »

Good morning,

Yesterday 17/7 some vessel was calling up port, but port were not responding. I was thinking it was because they were not using CTCSS tones they were not being received, though my decoder didn't find any tones on any transmissions. Does anyone know if they use tones at all? My set has issues sometimes with returning nil results when there is infact a result (tone).

On that note, does anyone on here also tune to marine frequencies?

Ta.
celestial_insight
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Post by celestial_insight »

Yep, I do (in fact that is mainly what I do) though here in Perth there is less to listen to.. To answer your question though, CTCSS / PL etc are not used on public marine VHF frequencies (ie the 55 Marine VHF channels and the 27 MHz Marine freqs). What freq/channel were you listening to?
radiotech
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Post by radiotech »

Just as I suspected, I didn't think it would be allowed on a public type' band. Thanks for your confirmation. The only two frequencies out of the band that I have heard activity on are 156.600 & 156.650 :)
celestial_insight
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Post by celestial_insight »

156.6 - channel 12 would be Port Ops, and 156.65 - channel 13 would be local navigation.
I am surprised you don't hear much on 156.8 - channel 16 distress, and 156.375 - channel 67 - alternate distress. Coast Radio Melbourne would most likely use these.
You may need to contact your local Volunteer Sea Rescue Group (or Volunteer Coasat Guard they call it there) for their working channels on 27 MHz and VHF.
Similar to here, they may use channel 9 for Water Police, 73 for Rescue Groups, 6 for SAR Aircraft contact, 77 and 72 for chit chat, and handful of others for repeaters.
celestial_insight
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Post by celestial_insight »

There is a lot more info here, as well as the Maritime UHF freqs that you can listen to if you are close to port. Worth reading if you need to sit your MROCP VHF only or VHF and HF..
http://www.amc.edu.au/omc/handbook
radiotech
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Location: Geelong - Australia
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Post by radiotech »

As per your information I've been monitoring 156.800 and there was a very brief conversation taking place on it. Will add it to my memory bank for future listening.

EDIT: Just found 156.400 as I was posting!
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