US Coast Guard transmissions - Always low audio?

[trimmerj]

Can someone measure their deviation? The USCG uses a lot of Motorola commercial radios, especially for base stations and they could be accidently programmed for narrow band.

Our marine coastal stations where handled by one tech guy for the east coast, maybe 10-15 stations, and where never any issues but then he retired and since then it is a constant problem with audio levels. Sometimes there's hardly any audio after the annual checkup and I'm wondering why there's a silent carrier on the marine channel. But turning up the volume I can hear the dispatcher from the distress central talking. It probably where something like a 10% modulation level.

It stays like that for a year and then it instead could be too much audio for the next year that makes the squelch in a radio to clip the audio. A boat owner could then say that he had difficulties hearing the dispatcher and he or she would then talk even louder that made the situation worse. They couldn't figure out what was wrong and reverted to a phone call instead of radio. That happened several times. At the moment the audio are set a bit too low, maybe a 25% modulation level.

/Ubbe

You'd be suprised to see how many people don't understand differences between line and mic level audio in the broadcast world.

 

[prcguy]

You'd be suprised to see how many people don't understand differences between line and mic level audio in the broadcast world.

That's about a 40dB difference and if set for line and fed with a mic you wouldn't hear anything. I don't think anyone aligned the system for line level input. Next time I visit my local USCG base and if I have a reason to be in the secure room I'll see what kind of mic is used for the Rescue 21 system.

 

[iamrftechnj]

this is almost always operator error or just operator doesn't care by not checking the audio level setting on their console,
Have to agree with you, in my case with our equipment it also matters what time of day for the low audio, if its breakfast or lunch time they flip the mic boom over their head to eat and forget to put it back. it sounds simple but I have stood behind some of them and observed it.

 

[mciupa]

I think it it is just common practice. I hear the US Coast guard from Buffalo and an automated female voice Canadian Coast Guard from Cobourg and both are very low modulation, almost soothing to listen to.

When incidents do happen, as in a MAYDAY, they are very loud and clear.

 

[hill]

if its breakfast or lunch time they flip the mic boom over their head to eat and forget to put it back.

It's been a few years, since I was in a Coast Guard command center at the Sector level and never saw any boom mics.

It was either just regular desk mics or the mics built into the consoles.

 

[k8md]

I have noticed that USCG Sector Detroit is pretty quiet on 16. When they do UMIB on 21A, they seem to be loud and clear. It's very possible they have a radio tech that is experienced with Part 90 and not so much with Part 80. It's possible they set the deviation at 2.5 kHz as they would with a LMRS transmitter. If it's pounded into their heads to never set anything to 5 kHz.

It's also possible that the desk has poor ergonomics. I have found with 911 dispatch centers, the intuition is to place the desk mic underneath the LCD with the radio controls. This is a mistake. The dispatchers are usually reading from CAD when they are in transmit, which means they are not facing the desk microphone. It's possible the USCG sectors have a similar ergonomics issue where the operators is not speaking into the mic.