[endgame]

In Australia, to call the Rescue Coordination Centre on HF, you HAVE to use DSC: http://www.amsa.gov.au/search-and-rescue/distress-and-safety...

> If a vessel wishes to conduct a radiotelephony communication with the network, it is necessary to make initial contact via a DSC call. For safety or routine messages a shift to a working frequency is normally required.

When I did my training, they pushed DSC very hard.

Nit: You mention ch16 as being for distress traffic only, but my radio handbook also lists it for carrying urgency and safety messages, and as a routine calling channel (and then you move to a working channel and get out of the way).

Also: What crazy part of the world plays clutters ch16 with music?

[shiggerino]

Yes, that is true, 16 is also for urgency and safety messages, but ideally channel 70 should supersede 16 as the routine calling channel. Of course, for that to happen the equipment has to be made actually user friendly. It would be trivial to implement the software to let the OOW simply click an AIS target on the ECDIS to have that target's MMSI entered into the transceiver and a call initiated. If ships were running on free software someone would have already done that, sent a pull request to the ECDIS software maintainer, have it pass perfectly repeatable and transparent integration test suites to make sure the patch won't make the ship go keel up, and Bob's your uncle. But for some reason people seem afraid of this proposition.

As for music, last time I heard that was in the Java sea, but Americans aren't much better, making securité calls when moving their Bayliners, or the USCG with their incessant babble about irrelevant things.

[endgame]

Not everyone's got AIS and ECDIS though. The places where I trained really pushed DSC for fishing and recreational use, by making it relevant to the little guys too: "If you'd just found a good fishing spot or a nice quiet place, why would you go blabbing to everyone about it on ch16? Call your mate up on DSC instead." They also made a point of telling people to spend that bit extra to get a radio that doesn't suck. Buying a cheap transceiver and having to input a MMSI using up/down/enter/back is really annoying and doesn't help take-up at all.

Speaking of AIS, did you see this thing from a couple of years back: http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/v... ?

[shiggerino]

That's true. But it does help a lot that there's a merchant ship equipped with these things as well as a fast rescue boat if you're ever in distress. Furthermore, writing free software for the big ships will also help the little guys too, even if it means running the software on a laptop for extra situational awareness.

As for security, yes, this is a problem. It's the same in aviation with ADS-B, completely unauthenticated messages that the on-board software will happily digest,[1] whether it's to mislead the pilots or find some vulnerability in the avionics software to exploit. How can this be anything but gross negligence on the part of both the regulatory committees and the industry at large?

1. http://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/security-fla...