RFDS - Manitains Commitment to the HF Radio Service

Hi Laurie
The news may be of interest to all travelers with some considering HF as a future means of communication.

Whilst it has been well known to those of us who are VKS Members for sometime this is the first press release I have seen from the RFDS itself and was dated 16th November, so based on the release date its a new release from RFDS.

I thought it may be of interest to others who can relate to RFDS better than VKS.

From a personal perspective I have never relied on the RFDS HF Network in my remote emergency planning as I have always regarded and understood that VKS was a better and in my view a more reliable first point of contact if I was to elect to use the HF and not the Sat phone for an emergency.
As you are aware, VKS can arrange contact with RFDS quite easily on your behalf.

People can read and make of it as they will, maybe if you have questions or concerns about the why or how then those questions would be better directed at the RFDS or VKS directly??
I would be interested in the replies you receive also.

Cheers.

John

I accept your comments, and the importance of emergency updated information.

My reasons for my comments were more along the lines that VKS737 & RFDS seem be more excited about the new agreement that what it is people in an emergency situation actually need.

Having used VKS737 for 2 emergency situations in the past, I know personally that the most important issue is who I call first.

With the new arrangement for contacting RFDS in WA & Qld, it appears to be quite complex for people in an emergency situation. In a real emergency, my mind will be on the situation in front of me. Having to look for a manual which displays a load of selcall numbers appears to me, to be cumbersome and effectively mean a delay in communicating quickly with the RFDS.

If I can give you a real life example. A few years back, Vic Police changed its emergency contact number to a 5 digit number starting with 11***. I cant remember the other numbers. Research found that emergency situations, very few (if any) people could remember the new emergency number. Most people kept ringing 000, as it was easy to remember. The powers that be decided to go back to 000 as the number to contact for police in Victoria.

Oh, I have another example of people's memory in emergency situations. Many years ago I was treasurer for a local church. There was a fire in one of our buildings. The Priest at our church saw the flames (and with fear of the fire heading for other church buildings), he ran to the phone to call the fire brigade. Our priest was born in England but had been living in Australia for many many years, but in this state of emergency, he dialled the english emergency number 999. It took him a few minutes to realise that he had rung the wrong number. He knew the emergency number in Victoria was 000, but his confused brain went into his memory banks for what he knew as a child.

Getting back to contacting RFDS, I think more thought is needed to keep the contacting of the RFDS very very simple, so that the information can be easily remembered when facing an emergency situation. Having different for different states will cause great confusion, and in addition, having so many selcall numbers to contact is also a poor solution.

Laurie

"On the RFDS frequency web page it mentions the HF radio club to contact WA and the VKS club to contact Qld RFDS bases. Which is it, or is it both? "

It actually says "Members of the HF Radio Network". I don't think this is the HF Radio Club but VKS 737. See this link for VKS 737 VKS 737 RFDS Contacts
It is all as clear as mud. How do members of other clubs/networks get on eg HF Radio Club and HFoZ?

To me, it looks like one can selcall the required RFDS base using the listed selcall numbers either on the RFDS frequencies or on any of the VKS frequencies.

Looks like the only thinghs that have changed are the abolition of the "emergency call" button, and the substitution of a selcall number for the various RFDS bases.

Rod,
In an emergency situation, any frequency that gets a response is a good one.

I think that you will find that all the networks treat emergency calls as a priority no matter if the user is a member of the network or not.

I contacted the RFDS. They are going to change their frequency web page to clarify the use of VKS-737 in both WA and Qld RFDS Frequencies

They also said
"As per the contractual agreement with VKS-737, any member of any HF radio network can use VKS-737 frequencies to contact the RFDS in the case of an emergency without discrimination, therefore the procedures to do so would be identical to the ones currently published. We do know that other HF Radio Network providers have also allocated Selcall numbers on their networks which can be used to contact the RFDS. If you belong to another network please contact them to get further details."