Marine Operators channel

Status
Not open for further replies.

70cutlass442

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jan 24, 2010
Messages
404
Does anybody know if there are any marine operators still around? Mainly looking for lake Michigan area, but I figured with the use of cell phones, most of these channels are pretty quiet.
 

ecps92

Member
Joined
Jul 8, 2002
Messages
14,358
Location
Taxachusetts
With the Cellphones, many have gone and turned those frequencies over to Sea-Tow and the other Maritime AAA for use as an "Automated Radio Check" channel.

Does anybody know if there are any marine operators still around? Mainly looking for lake Michigan area, but I figured with the use of cell phones, most of these channels are pretty quiet.
 

QwKiE

Member
Joined
Mar 13, 2010
Messages
347
Location
Warren, Michigan
all the same frequencies are used

Marine freqs are still used all over the world there is call in points all over the great lakes for the freighters. That makes a lota calls from freighters to land spots this link is in the Erie, Detroit river, lake St Claire, and lake Huron.

Detroit and St. Clair Rivers Calling-In-Points -Boatnerd.com


I am sure if you search you will find for lake Michigan the call in points. go in to the RR for finding the freqs used for Marine and just use them in your scanner.
 

ecps92

Member
Joined
Jul 8, 2002
Messages
14,358
Location
Taxachusetts
The discussion was about the old Marine Operator channels who ran the old Phone Patch for Ship-Shore Telephone Traffic.

Marine freqs are still used all over the world there is call in points all over the great lakes for the freighters. That makes a lota calls from freighters to land spots this link is in the Erie, Detroit river, lake St Claire, and lake Huron.

Detroit and St. Clair Rivers Calling-In-Points -Boatnerd.com


I am sure if you search you will find for lake Michigan the call in points. go in to the RR for finding the freqs used for Marine and just use them in your scanner.
 

MtnBiker2005

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Dec 19, 2002
Messages
3,566
Location
San Diego County, California

RKG

Member
Joined
May 23, 2005
Messages
1,096
Location
Boston, MA
At one time, there were three classes of "marine operator" services.

The VHF service, operated by the local telephone company, operated on one or more of the "public correspondence" channels of the VHF Marine Channel Plan: 24-28 and 84-87. As Bill noted, these went away in the mid-90s or so, on account of the popular deployment of cellular telephones.

The "Harbor" service, which operated on a couple of 2 MHz MF duplex channels, was more or less a legacy of the old double-sideband marine radio. These were largely gone by the early 1980s, since the then-new marine VHF service had better audio and pretty much the same range.

Then there was the "High Seas" service, which operated on a bunch of ITU HF duplex channel pairs. The beauty of HF is that there are, in fact, several bands: 4 MHz, 6 MHz, 8 MHz, 12 MHz, 16 MHz and 22 MHz. Depending on the time of day, time of the year, time of the sunspot cycle, and a few other factors, range could be inter-continental. (I once spoke VIS, the High Seas service in Sydney, Australia, from Buzzards Bay, on 12 MHz in the early morning.)

In the U.S., there were four High Seas operations. WOO, WOM and KMI were all operated by AT&T. WOM would easily carry a vessel all the way across the Atlantic to Europe, while KMI covered a huge section of the Pacific. The fourth service was WLO, in Mobile, Alabama, which today operates unter the "ShipCom" brand. AT&T took down its High Seas service maybe 10 or 12 years ago, largely because vessels venturing far enough off shore to value this service were switching to satellite based systems, the cost of which (both infrastructure and toll) came tumbling down.
 
Last edited:

70cutlass442

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jan 24, 2010
Messages
404
Thanks for all the info guys, I remember about 10-15 years ago I heard someone place a call in the Milwaukee area. I though it was the coolest thing ever... but from what I gathered, those days are long gone. At least around here.
 

biomedbob

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Aug 15, 2007
Messages
95
Location
Monterey, Tennessee 38574-7355
As the former owner of a network (Georgia, Florida, Keys, and Gulf Coast) of Marine Operator stations, I saw the trend in the industry (as well as land mobile and radio paging) going to cellular, I sold all of those licenses and headed to the middle of nowhere Tennessee.

Not much activity on Marine frequencies here, except for the occasional "Notice to Mariners" by the Coast Guard on the Ohio River.

biomedbob

kf4br
 

KB6YNO

Newbie
Joined
Dec 15, 2008
Messages
2
Shipcom won't be able to help him in the Great Lakes. They have VHF access only in the Gulf of Mexico area.
 

The_B_Chief

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Sep 4, 2007
Messages
196
Location
Side Alpha With The Command
Reading this thread was a great trip down Memory Lane. I remember as a kid spending my summers on Lake Erie hear the Erie Marine Operator. I would always switch over to listen to the conversations. We never used the service as we had access to a VHF radio at our house on the shore.
 

k8krh

Member
Joined
Dec 12, 2009
Messages
381
Use to be WFN where I worked, we ran a lot of phone calls, 4 of us on day shift, but all tumbled down when the cellular phone came into the marker, the station closed around 1998 or 1999.

I remember hearing ROGER CITY MICHIGAN marine, but know they closed to, also ST. LOUIS RADIO very active but closed also.

Only stations I hear now is the US COAST GUARD on chnl 16, and maybe a boater or two during the week around LOUISVILLE, KY.

DOCTOR
 

Darth_vader

Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2013
Messages
327
http://maritelusa.com/

The local Maritel service out of Portland was on channel 26, KOE815. Occasionally the shore transmitter would play a recording saying "this is KOE815, Maritel marine operator located in Portland, Oregon. Ready to place your call on channel two six." So then to actually get the system's attention you'd key up briefly to get the prompt, "this is KOE815, Maritel marine operator located at Portland, Oregon. To place a call please key your microphone for an additional five seconds now."

At that point you'd key up for a few more seconds and the operator (don't know where their switching office was) would come on the air and set the call up. When monitoring the shore channel, one would always hear a ~60 pulse-per-minute 1000 Hz tone in the same cadence as the busy signal on the landline, when the ship side was keyed up, so basically you'd end up only hearing one side of the conversation. (But don't bother asking me what I had for breakfast this morning.)

I guess they're still in business and it must still be on 26, but I haven't heard anybody using it in a very long time. Maybe I should kerchunk it one of these days and see, out of curiosity.

Looks like they have coverage around Lake Michigan, though: http://maritelusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/LicensedArea-660x370.jpg
 

The_B_Chief

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Sep 4, 2007
Messages
196
Location
Side Alpha With The Command
MariTEL

The local Maritel service out of Portland was on channel 26, KOE815. Occasionally the shore transmitter would play a recording saying "this is KOE815, Maritel marine operator located in Portland, Oregon. Ready to place your call on channel two six." So then to actually get the system's attention you'd key up briefly to get the prompt, "this is KOE815, Maritel marine operator located at Portland, Oregon. To place a call please key your microphone for an additional five seconds now."

At that point you'd key up for a few more seconds and the operator (don't know where their switching office was) would come on the air and set the call up. When monitoring the shore channel, one would always hear a ~60 pulse-per-minute 1000 Hz tone in the same cadence as the busy signal on the landline, when the ship side was keyed up, so basically you'd end up only hearing one side of the conversation. (But don't bother asking me what I had for breakfast this morning.)

I guess they're still in business and it must still be on 26, but I haven't heard anybody using it in a very long time. Maybe I should kerchunk it one of these days and see, out of curiosity.

Looks like they have coverage around Lake Michigan, though: http://maritelusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/LicensedArea-660x370.jpg

That's awesome!!
 

Rt169Radio

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Aug 24, 2011
Messages
2,959
Location
CT
That's cool, I also noticed that they have coverage in my area too. But I have never heard anything like that in my area on the marine freqs.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top