[CQ-Contest] Contesters and emergencies

[Chuck]

Greetings!

The key, I think, is to think ahead BEFORE any
emergencies come up. Ask yourself the simple
question.. 'If I had some emergency/priority
traffic that I needed to get through and
________________________ (fill in the blank with
the issue you would to work through) was going
on, HOW would I handle it?'

This gives you time to play 'what if?' games and
generate some outline of what you might do. That
way  IF something happened.. you have, at least,
SOME basic framework already in place.

As far as getting BONA FIDE EMERGENCY traffic
through, the rules of the game get rather broad. 
If the ONLY avenue you could find, based on YOUR
assessment of the conditions at the time, was to
go 'just outside the band' and pass the EMERGENCY
traffic and then QRT.. then you do that.

However, here's the wrinkle. You would want to
DOCUMENT what you did, where you did it, with
whom you did it, and why.  Details, details,
details. call it an 'after action report' if you
like.

Depending on the incident, you MIGHT consider
notifying the nearest FCC field office of the
matter just in case THEY get a complaint OR they
are going to come after you for violating the
rules. 

At a MINIMUM .. document it for your OWN files.

Case in point..

In 1980, I was sailing as a Radio Officer aboard
a US Flagged cargo ship. Being a ham,naturally, I
stuck around the radio room and just tuned the
bands and listened while I was reading, or
dozing, or taking a break.  We had (as they do on
all ships) an autoalarm that signals when a
distress call has been received and ships are
being alerted to come up on the air and listen.

While I was there, the autoalarm went off. I
tuned to the standard distress alerting CW
channel and there was a message for my ship
detailing that a sailing vessel had reported they
were sinking. They were couple of hundred miles
off our course but we were the closest ship. The
sailing vessel advised the Canadian CG that they
were sinking.  Turns out they had a ham on board
and he was  operating SSB within the CW portion
of the US 20M band.  They requested I attempt
establish comms and advise.  (Why they didn't
establish comms direclty with the ship? I don't
know. They didn't say and I didn't ask)

So, I tuned up our 3KW HF marine TX on 20M. Since
we needed to use voice, I opp'd SSB. I came on,
ID'd using my commercial SHIP call and plainly
stated WHY I was there. I then repeatedly called
the sailing vessel.  During those calls, I also
repeated WHO I WAS and WHY I was there. Sadly, no
answer was received aftger about 1 hour of
trying.

I stopped, cleared the frequency and also
repeated who and what I was doing, and QRT'd. I
contacted Canadian CG by Marine CW, told them of
results and cleared. I then wrote a detailed log
of what happened both for OUR records and also
the Captain of the ship.  I also informed the FCC
in Washington DC and they replied that I was fine
and not in violation and they thanked me for my
service. 

So, the key is.. DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT!

Think ahead, make some basic plans and you'll be
a lot better off IF you need to do something.

73
Chuck K3FT
(x-KHLX and NCOM also WMH Baltimore Radio)

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