§ 80.1117 Procedure for receipt and acknowledgement of distress alerts.

(a) Normally, distress calls received using digital selective calling are only acknowledged using a DSC acknowledgement by a coast station. Ships should delay any acknowledgement in order to give sufficient time for a coast station to acknowledge the call. In cases where no acknowledgement has been heard and no distress traffic has been heard, the ship should transmit a distress alert relay to the coast station. Upon advice from the Rescue Coordination Center, the ship may transmit a DSC acknowledgement call to stop it from being repeated. Acknowledgement by digital selective calling of receipt of a distress alert in the terrestrial services must comply with ITU-R M.541-9 (incorporated by reference, see § 80.7). (b) Acknowledgement through a satellite of receipt of a distress alert from a ship earth station must be sent immediately (see § 80.1119). (c) Acknowledgement by radiotelephony of receipt of a distress alert from a ship station or a ship earth station must be given in the following form: (1) The distress signal MAYDAY; (2) The call sign or other identification of the station sending the distress message, spoken three times; (3) The words THIS IS (or DE spoken as DELTA ECHO in case of language difficulties); (4) The call sign or other identification of the station acknowledging receipt, spoken three times; (5) The word RECEIVED (or RRR spoken as ROMEO ROMEO ROMEO in case of language difficulties); (6) The distress signal MAYDAY. (d) The acknowledgement by direct-printing telegraphy of receipt of a distress alert from a ship station must be given in the following form: (1) The distress signal MAYDAY; (2) The call sign or other identification of the station sending the distress alert; (3) The word DE; (4) The call sign or other identification of the station acknowledging receipt of the distress alert; (5) The signal RRR; (6) The distress signal MAYDAY. (e) The acknowledgement by direct-printing telegraphy of receipt of a distress alert from a ship earth station must be given by the coast earth station receiving the distress alert by retransmitting the ship station identity of the ship transmitting the distress alert.