Before the HF maritime CW bands were closed back in the ‘90s, I spent many enjoyable hours listening to ships and maritime coastal stations all over the world while they exchanged CW messages or sent position and weather reports using the old AMVER system. It was a constant delight to hear various ship Radio Officers (ROs) using their keyers, bugs and good old hand keys to demonstrate their unique fists to the world, especially when using the latter two! Fists ranged from simply superb to downright awful, making one wonder if the ship’s oiler had been enlisted to send the nightly traffic! It was particularly interesting to plot their positions, as many of the vessels eventually showed up in the Port of Vancouver, an easy drive to where I was living at the time.
I often mailed reception reports to ship ROs and had a few invitational ship tours when they arrived in town. I was always impressed with the ship’s radio shack as well as the vessel's onboard cleanliness. Most were truly spotless!
Several years ago I wrote a blog describing my use of YADD, [Yet Another DSC Decoder] a brilliant piece free software written by the late Dirk Classsens. At the time I had been unaware that there was still a huge amount of HF maritime activity and that every large commercial vessel involved in deep sea travel was still on the air after all these years!
A look back at the earlier blog will explain many of the important things you might want to know about YADD and how to use it.
I recently fired YADD up again last week to see what was being heard and what I might be missing during these high sunspot days of Solar Cycle 25.
Some of the interesting catches, to me at least, began with a 2135Z decode of ‘CQ2283’ the bulk carrier AGIOS GEORGIOS S calling another vessel on 12577.0 kHz.
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| At 41,000 tons and 225m, she's a big ship, earlier named the ICARUS |
Flying under the flag of Portugal, she was bound for Kakinada, India, and almost at the antipode from my location
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| The AGIOS GEORGIOS S nears Kakinada, India, in the Bay of Bengal |
Next was the container ship MOL CHARISMA, C6WN8, calling RCC Australia (Canberra), also on 12577.0 kHz.
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| MOL CHARISMA - 21,000 tons and 316m long |
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| Registered in the Bahamas, the MOL CHARISMA was in the Aleutian Island chain near Dutch Harbor, Alaska, bound for Prince Rupert, BC. |
The general cargo vessel MAHO CORAL, 3FEP4 (Panamanian registry) was heard twice, calling the nearby oil tanker, ORIENT CHALLENGE, 9V5083 (Singapore registry) on 12577.0 kHz. A response was heard eight seconds after the second call.
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| The MAHO CORAL - 127m |
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| The ORIENT CHALLENGE - 183m |
I was surprised and delighted to see that the ship being called was right behind her and both were just around the corner from me in Boundary Pass, heading for Vancouver!
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| About to enter BC's Gulf Islands enroute Vancouver |
It was great to see the pair from my window about an hour later as they passed the Roberts Bank coal and container port.
A switch to 16804.5 kHz found the CMA CGM MAUI calling the coastal station in Valencia, Spain.
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| CMA CGM MAUI, a true leviathan - 154,000 tons 366m length |
At the time of my intercept, the French-registered CGM MAUI (FMYR) was off the southern tip of Italy, anchored at Valletta, Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea.
Next was the crude oil tanker YANNIS P, calling Guam Radio on 16MHz. After transiting the Suez Canal, she was in the Red Sea, bound for Singapore.
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| YANNIS P - 81,000 tons, 274m |
Registered in the Marshall Islands (radio call V7A2246), the YANNIS P was hauling Russian oil from Ust-Luga to Singapore, a very long voyage! Her 0019Z transmission on 16804.5 kHz was made at 0319 local time in the Red Sea, demonstrating the great HF propagation to be had during these solar-peak years.
Shortly before my local sunset, I decided to drop down to the MF range for the evening and listen on 2187.5 kHz, not really expecting to hear too much. I was surprised to immediately see a decode from the BBC XINGANG (V2GC3), a 125m long general cargo ship registered in Barbados.
The BBC XINGANG was at anchor in the St. Lawrence River, not far from Montreal ... a surprising catch for 2 MHz as the sky was still bright here on the west coast.
An all-night listen produced several hundred ships, mostly calling each other, in all likelihood to comply with their mandatory daily DSC system test. Ship positions ranged from the US east coast, to the Gulf of Mexico and west into the Pacific. Only one coastal station of note was heard, that being the one on Kamchatka Island, Russia. As conditions improve, I plan to do more overnight listening on this frequency as there are numerous coastals in the Far East that make for challenging DX targets.
All of the signals logged to date have been heard on my Yaesu FT-1000mp and simple half-sloper wire antennas. Listening has been from the east shore of Mayne Island, BC, midway between Vancouver and Vancouver Island in the Strait of Georgia.
My home on Mayne is a wonderful location for radio as it is extremely quiet and located right on the ocean. My best direction favors the east while my poorest is to the west, due to Vancouver Island. The path to Asia has a good saltwater start but eventually runs into Vancouver Island and parts of the BC mainland before reaching the open ocean.
As good as this spot is, it truly pales in comparison to that of fellow DXer, Walter Salmaniw, from Victoria. Walt also has a home in Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) located at the northern tip of the island.
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| Dream location! |
From here, Walt has recently been listening on the DSC frequencies as well, using a 450' N-S unterminated (bi-directional) Beverage antenna next to the ocean. With nothing but saltwater for hundreds of miles, Walt's reception on all bands is truly mind-boggling. His 2 MHz overnight run, netted dozens of ships in Asia as well as coastals from the Far East! On 16 MHz, for every single ship that I was able to decode over-the-pole from the middle east, Walt would log a half dozen or more. When not in Haida Gwaii, Walt can listen remotely from his home in Victoria ... truly the best of both worlds!
As mentioned earlier, some of my fondest radio memories were those times spent listening to HF maritime CW activity. Many 'prepared form cards' or PFCs were sent to the ships or coastal stations heard, with an amazingly high return rate. These prepared QSL cards left blank spots for the recipient (Radio Officer) to fill in. They were often returned along with several pages of handwritten letters.
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| The 'lakers' were very reliable QSLers |
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| Laker STEWART J CORT |
If you miss the maritime HF activity or want to collect some new maritime QSLs, the opportunity still exists ... but instead of sending a reception report in care of the ship's Radio Officer, it will now need to go to the ship's Electronics Officer (ETO) or to the Captain. Reports can be sent to the ship's company who will then forward them to an upcoming port of call.
There is an an active group of DSC maritime DXers in Groups.io DSC-List, where loggings are posted daily. The group also has several helpful files and guides that will be of interest to those getting started.
One of the group members, GM4SLV, has set up a wonderful website called YaDDNet devoted to collecting and posting listener's decoded loggings in realtime. One of YADD's features is the ability to automatically upload decoded signals, similar to PSK Reporter. It's an easy 30-second job to configure YADD to upload your spots to the net. His site also contains the latest MMSI look-up file used by YADD which is updated in real time from the latest log postings ... presently at 72,626 vessels!
Clicking on any of the uploaded ship names displayed in the real time YaDDNet log, automatically takes you to an online vessel-tracking site which usually has a picture of the ship along with all of its information, including its present position.
If you set up YADD to do some listening, I'd strongly urge you to also set it up so that your decoded spots are uploaded to the YaDDNet page in real time. Your latest logs will also keep the MMSI database up-to-date for all YADD users worldwide.
Good luck with your maritime listening or QSLing. Who says there's nothing interesting to be found on shortwave radio anymore!
