Station Operations, Logging, Watchkeeping and Interference Management
This domain covers the daily discipline of the watch: what you record, how you keep watch, and what you do when a frequency is degraded by interference.
Watchkeeping
- Maintain a continuous listening watch on the distress frequency and on the channels your station is licensed to guard. A SELCAL watch on HF is not a listening watch; the receiver must still be on and the decoder monitored.
- Never leave a position without a formal handover covering frequencies in use, outstanding traffic, equipment status and any incident.
- Check transmitter, receivers and standby power at the start of each watch and after any interruption.
Logging
- Log in UTC: date and time, frequency or channel, station called, summary of traffic, distress or urgency actions, equipment failures and staff on watch. Entries are made at the time and never erased or overwritten.
- Where required, retain voice recordings for the period set by the licensing authority.
Interference
- Identify the type: co-channel, adjacent channel, intermodulation, spurious emission or jamming. Note time, frequency, bearing if available, and effect on service.
- Do not retransmit blindly into interference; use an alternative frequency, inform ATS, and report to the administration with enough detail for direction finding.
Worked example. Log entry: 2024-06-12 1430Z, 121.500 MHz, 5N-BXX declared MAYDAY engine failure 40 nm south of Kano; relayed to Kano ACC and the rescue centre; frequency guarded until 1520Z when traffic ended. It captures UTC time, identity, action and closure.
Traps. Logging local time; writing the log at the end of a shift; muting a receiver to avoid noise; chatting on a live frequency; reporting interference without frequency or time.