§ 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.

   [ 57 FR 9065 , Mar. 16, 1992, as amended at  68 FR 46980 , Aug. 7, 2003;  73 FR 4491 , Jan. 25, 2008;  76 FR 67618 , Nov. 2, 2011]

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