Ben Ellison has this story at Panbo:
Sorry, but I’m going to start off this week with depressing news: The U.S. Coast Guard — which I’ve always thought of as a major proponent of DSC VHF — recently issued a Safety Alert that treats one of its core features as a hazard. In fact, the Guard now "strongly recommends disabling theautomatic channel switching feature…" Does this mean that placing direct DSC calls to AIS targets — a function that seems to be nicely designed into the DSC system, and one that many of us are enthusiastic about — may not work well? Yes, it probably does. But, then again, the USCG found itself between a rock and a hard place…
