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District Staff Officer – Communications Rick Taylor, DSO-CM 5NR
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Interested in USCG Communications? Check out the pdf on Becoming Qualified in Telecommunications. The programs the telecommunications participants enjoy is composed of four branches having responsibility for Coast Guard Support, Contingency Communications, Qualification and Training, and Program Integration.
Auxiliary Communications Program is the umbrella under which assets may be strategically combined to meet the requirements of the Coast Guard, the Auxiliary District Commodores, and the recreational boating public. More than 8,500 Telecommunications Operator qualified members participate in the program.
In addition to many important VHF (short range) communications missions that support recreational boating safety, the ACP directly supports the active-duty Coast Guard with its Auxiliary HF (long range) capabilities. HF radio facilities are engaged in the 24/7 Auxiliary Monitoring Mission. This program is a key mechanism that provides the ability to gauge the effectiveness and quality of U.S. Coast Guard’s broadcasts within the U.S. 200-mile territorial limit.
Augmentation Communications supports the USCG Communications Command, Sectors, and other Coast Guard commands that require additional coverage of HF/MF Digital Distress frequencies during storms, communications outages, and other disruptive events.
A new offering the ALL Auxiliarists is AUXPTT, Auxiliary Push-To-Talk. The National Telecommunications Division is pleased to offer Push-to-Talk service to Auxiliarists, providing worldwide coverage in a familiar push-to-talk format on your cellular phone. Switching seamlessly between Wi-Fi and cellular coverage, AUXPTT is an encrypted system, available only to Coast Guard Auxiliarists. You’ll have access to channels restricted for your District, and other channels to talk to members of other Districts. Your fellow AUXPTT users will be only a button press away. Gone will the need to make repeat phone calls to
send a message to your team — get them all onto AUXPTT and you’ll reach them all with a press of a button!
AUXPTT is not just for our COMMS personnel, but an easy and
convenient tool for all Auxiliarists. Whether you use it to stay in touch with your flotilla members, coordinate field activities such as vessel inspections, conduct surface patrols, or communicate at civic events and contingency operations, you’ll find it the perfect partner. Plus, AUXPTT provides you with real-time mapping, showing your
location and the locations of all other AUXPTT users right on your smartphone. National TeleCOMM has specially trained administrators on the system to provide you with help if you need it. Those ADMINS can reconfigure the system in an emergency, providing additional channels, or merging channels with other Districts.
Using AUXPTT is easy. Just push the PTT on the channel you want to talk on, mention the name of who you’re calling, then your name, and announce the channel you’re using — just like on a two-way radio. That’s our only etiquette. We like keeping it simple, so you don’t need “over” or “out” or call signs. National AUXPTT Announcement
Operating requirements for Auxiliary Facilities.
Per National Directives and Requirements for Currency to Operate Auxiliary Facilities, there are one of two requirements.
- One is that the operator is on a Surface or Air Facilities and are operating that facilities radio as a trainee or qualified crew.
- The other is that the operator is a trainee with a qualified and current Telecommunications Operator (TCO) or is a current TCO.
What is a current TCO? An Auxiliary member that has the following:
- Completed TCO, or has the qualification of Watchstander (WS).
- MUST BE CURRENT with Annual TCO and Team Coordination Training (TCT) workshops. 2025 Annual TCO workshop is required.
- Workshops need to be completed by June 30 each year to remain currency in TCO.
Workshops may be delivered at a local level by an Auxiliarist that is a current TCO member and is a current Instructor (IT). Workshops are to be entered into Auxdata II (AD2) by local unit IS team. Also, the workshop needs to be put on the unit FSO/SO-CM monthly report.
The workshop follows the National slide here 2025 Annual TCO Workshop Slides
Filling out the 7004 Form.
To register for or to reinspect a current Operational Radio Facility, the Offer for Use 7004 form must be filled out using Adobe Acrobat Reader. MUST BE FILLED OUT in READER. DO NOT USE the form reader function in the web browsers. Form must be saved locally and opened using Acrobat Reader from the File Open feature.
2023 Thoughts with regard to Offers for Use and other Facilities issues from the DSO-CM Rick Taylor:
Note to all communications team, to be considered current you MUST take the annual TCT refresher. The TCO qualification is required for ALL communicators using an Auxiliary radio not on an operational surface or air facility. TCT refresher is required for all surface and air crew.
New slant on radio operational facilities with the inspections for our district. Each location, house, car, SARDET, has only one facility number for the VHF and HF radios. With that being said, when submitting a new facility, a new HF radio or a reinspection, the 7004 form has both a VHF and an HF (if you have one) on the form. Moving forward, we will only register and reinspect on one form for the Facility Location. This most add was an HF to a VHF land based station, they requested that we start a new facility record in ADII. When adding an HF facility, please call me prior to adding to ADII.
Examples:
I only have one VHF marine radio that I wish use as an Auxiliary Facility, then there is only one radio on the 7004 form.
I have one VHF commercial radio programmed with USCG Aux frequencies and the Marine VHF band. Then there is only that radio on the form but denote the radio (like a ICOM F5021) is set for 25w Marine, 50w Aux channels.
I have three VHF radios in my shack that I use for the Auxiliary, pick one and only one, and put it on the 7004 form. You are expected to be responsible to make sure that the other radios meet the Auxiliary requirements for use. Note only one VHF radio is on the form, but you may use other compliant radios. Note, you will have only one call sign for that Facility. So in my case, I have three compliant radios in my home shack, I have one VHF call sign Coast Guard Auxiliary Paxtonia Radio for all three radios.
I have three HF compliant and the three VHF compliant radios. I now only manage one 7004 form and one ADII Facility record. In that case I do have one HF CALL Sign NF53EY and one VHF Coast Guard Paxtonia Radio.
You may have noted how I referenced my VHF call sign with the full (corrected) name. We need to be compliant with the call sign. Also attached this email is a description of the call sign naming convention. If you remember, we may shorten the call sign once it was communicated once. After the initial contact I will shorten the call sign to Paxtonia Radio. Just like on my Surface OPFAC “Auxiliary Vessel 203262”, and subsequent usage after initial, it goes to “262” until that conversation is completed.
As for filling out the 7004 offer for use forms. DO NOT EDIT the form using it in the web browser.
- You must use Adobe Acrobat reader by saving the form on the system (Disk or other folder), selecting the file to edit.
- If one is not able to enter the Lat Long information for the form to convert it to the required format, then one is probably using the web browser to edit or fill in the form.
- Make SPECIAL NOTE, enter the LAT with XXXX.XN. XXXX.XN example would be 3994.9N for 39 deg 94 mins 9 something seconds. It will only take the 4 (digits) decimal point 1(digit)N format as input.
- Another 7004 note, the HF antenna range must be in the xxx-xxx format. typical Frequency range for HF is 002-026
Most reports and documents on the 5NR website are Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) files. You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to read or print the documents. To save the documents to your computer, right-click the link and select “save target as…” (Internet Explorer) or “save link as…” (Netscape).
Even if you already have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you should make sure you have the latest version.
Submitting Inspection Records in AUXDATA II.
There have been some changes at the National level. The names to use when submitting an inspection in AuxData II (AD2) is William Walter, BC-RTI and Andrew Ely for DVC-RT.
