Communications – Radio

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.