§  80.141   General provisions for ship stations.

   (a) Points of communication. Ship stations and marine utility stations
   on board ships are authorized to communicate with any station in the
   maritime mobile service.

   (b) Service requirements for all ship stations. (1) Each ship station
   must receive and acknowledge all communications which are addressed to
   the ship or to any person on board.

   (2) Every ship, on meeting with any direct danger to the navigation of
   other ships such as ice, a derelict vessel, a tropical storm,
   subfreezing air temperatures associated with gale force winds causing
   severe icing on superstructures, or winds of force 10 or above on the
   Beaufort scale for which no storm warning has been received, must
   transmit related information to ships in the vicinity and to the
   authorities on land unless such action has already been taken by
   another station. All such radio messages must be preceded by the safety
   signal.

   (3) A ship station may accept communications for retransmission to any
   other station in the maritime mobile service. Whenever such messages or
   communications have been received and acknowledged by a ship station
   for this purpose, that station must retransmit the message as soon as
   possible.

   (c) Service requirements for vessels. Each ship station provided for
   compliance with Part II of Title III of the Communications Act must
   provide a public correspondence service on voyages of more than 24
   hours for any person who requests the service. Compulsory
   radiotelephone ships must provide this service for at least four hours
   daily. The hours must be prominently posted at the principal operating
   location of the station.

   (d) Operating conditions. Effective August 1, 1994, VHF hand-held,
   portable transmitters used while connected to an external power source
   or a ship antenna must be equipped with an automatic timing device that
   deactivates the transmitter and reverts the transmitter to the receive
   mode after an uninterrupted transmission period of five minutes, plus
   or minus 10 percent. Additionally, such transmitters must have a device
   that indicates when the automatic timer has deactivated the
   transmitter. See also § 80.203(c).

   [ 51 FR 31213 , Sept. 2, 1986, as amended at  56 FR 57988 , Nov. 15, 1991;
    68 FR 46961 , Aug. 7, 2003]