[Milsurplus] U.S. Coast Guard Traditions

[Hubert Miller]

There are very few deepwater fishers harbored here. Some few do tuna out farther, or go up all the way to Alaska.
You see more larger ships with HF antennas up in Seattle. Here I don't recall seeing any, except for a few large ships that
go to Alaska. The average fishing vessel here, no. Just VHF and radar. The international conventions re Mayday, Pan, etc.
date to 1930s. There is no reason an English speaking country for entirely internal affairs should have to use French, 
except tradition. Doesn't matter at all that it's "always been taught that way." That is not a good reason, not good logic.
Does it make more sense to use English or French here? Is this like the Coast Guard announcing that bar conditions will
follow on 157.1 MHz ? Maybe that numeric satisfies ITU regulations also. There was once also an FCC requirement in this
country that we be able to take Morse at some specified WPM for a ham radio license. I noticed some other countries
previously had already downgraded or ditched entirely this rule. There was a big furor over dropping that tradition. 
Times are changing always. Most FM stations in this country hardly use call letters any more, altho they still have to be
licensed by the FCC, and that registry is accessible outside the USA. I notice a similar trend in the MW ( AM ) broadcast
band, even tho these stations sometimes have international reach. 

The Coast Guard is pretty popular here. Largely I think because they have a helicopter stationed here. There's not a year
that passes that the CG chopper doesn't save a half dozen or so people.  They do great work, but sometimes there are 
little mistakes. They had one guy doing the bar report broadcast at night, who rattled it off as fast as he could. I don't know 
if this was a little game of his or he thought the duty was pointless and he hated doing it. A fellow worker of mine told me
about during his USCG years, destroying new unused equipment so that the budget would not be cut in the new year.  There
is sometimes, rarely, some interesting listening on the VHF channels here. A few years ago a fishing vessel missed the bar
entrance while under Coast Guard accompaniment with spotlights. A huge wave rolled the fishing vessel and smashed it. 
I had the scanner on but missed that part of the action and only heard some minutes later that they were recovering bodies
from the beach. I was surprised when a couple days later when walking the beach I came upon the wheelhouse of the vessel 
sitting on the beach with the house half deep in sand. 
-Hue Miller