# Selective Calling number directory?



## Jonathan H. (Jul 3, 2015)

Following on from my post on the Marconi Coastcall II, I now have a manual for it which came through courtsey of the Museum of Power archives. An excellent resource for Marconi (and other) manuals etc.

However, I was wondering if their was a directory of numbers produced for Selective Calling - I.e some form of telephone directory for want of a better phrase?

The SC number for my unit is 45744 - I believe Coast stations had 4 digits and ships 5?

I am guessing that if such a directory does still exist somewhere in an archive, then I could potentially discover the name of the ship my unit was fitted to?

Thanks,
Jonathan


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## Larry Bennett (Aug 28, 2005)

All ship Selcall numbers should be in the ITU List of Ship Stations. They certainly used to be, but not sure nowadays. From memory I recall the QE2 was 45509 and GKA was 3220 which confirms your initial thoughts on the length of numbers.

As an aside, just scanning through ALRS Vol 1 and note the following Coast Stations are interestingly still providing a commercial radiotelex service:

BAHRAIN/A9M [4650]
OLYMPIA, GREECE/SVO [1780]
MOSCOW/UAT [3701]
MURMANSK/UDK [3744]
SAINT PETERSBURG/UGC [3700]
ISTANBUL/TAH [4360]
GUANGZHOU/XSQ [2017]
SHANGHAI/XSG [2010]
TIANJIN/XSV [2012]
NEVELSK/UFM [3733]
PETROPAVLOVSK/UFH [3737]
VLADIVISTOK/UFL [3714]
MOBILE/WLO [1090]

There are a few smaller stations but their service is extremely limited and irregular.

Larry +


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## Jonathan H. (Jul 3, 2015)

Larry,

Thanks for the reply and the information on the ITU list of ships.
Interesting too that there are still some coastal stations using Telex.

Having received the manual which helped confirm the voltage, I powered the unit up this afternoon. I could only use the 'Test' setting of course, but all appears to be fine with it. Both the 'All Ships' and 'Own Ship' lights lit in the test and the two tone alarm sounded.
I did make a short video of it, which hopefully I will put on YouTube at some point.

Strangely, the frequency of the receiver on board appears to have been altered from the selective calling frequency of 2170.5kHz to 2182kHz at some point in the past. I wonder if it had been perhaps adapted to a distress watch receiver. I assume the 'All Ships' alert would still wake it up for a distress call on that frequency?

Regards,
Jonathan


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## richardwakeley (Jan 4, 2010)

The selective calls are still in the ITU books - these days it's the "List of Ship Stations and Maritime Mobile Service Identity Assignments", which is normally carried onboard as a CD-ROM, never taken out of it's package and serves only as a source of income for the ITU.
The many ships which still have NBDP (I hesititate to say 'use NBDP') are mostly programmed with their 9-digit MMSI as the selcall. Very few still retain a 5-digit call.


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## Jonathan H. (Jul 3, 2015)

I see what you mean Richard, there are some 2015 editions on sale on an auction site for £14.95 at the moment compared to £300+ for the current version.
I'll contact the ITU archives and see if they can help, with a c.1980's version.

Jonathan


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## Jonathan H. (Jul 3, 2015)

An update on the above...
I contacted the ITU archive and had a swift reply from a very helpful lady called Heather in their Library. 
It appears that 45744 never appeared in their lists (she checked from 1970 upto 1991) although other numbers around it were listed. Not sure of the reason, but it possibly could have been an un-listed military call number?

Larry - absolutely correct on the Q.E 2 number being 45509. The previous number, 45508, was issued to the ill-fated Atlantic Conveyor according to an extract of the publication she sent through.

Also the query on the 2182kHz frequency transpired to be this after finding some more info on the web. 
2182kHz was apparently used as the MF selective calling frequency until 1st April 1977, when it changed to 2170.5kHz. The manual I have was printed sometime in 1977 and states 2170.5 as the frequency on the receiver board. So this seems to indicate that my unit would have been produced prior to 1977.

Jonathan


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## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

Out of interest, this is the main RT point at GKZ. The Selcall unit is the box above the EC958's. I am not sure of the date, but note the telephone dial we used for calls then, so must be late 70's. We never had a dedicated 2170.5 transmitter so it would have been selectable on the panel next to the selcall, from our H1000 which had all of the frequencies in use available. I don't remember that we used it very much. 

David


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## Jonathan H. (Jul 3, 2015)

I have just uploaded a short video to YouTube of the Coastcall going through its test routine.
Video is here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RvqxdLHmMCI

Thanks for the post and picture David - interesting photo.

Cheers
Jonathan


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