Taxi Driver Online

Coastguard scrambles as taxi driver jams emergency 'mayday' radio frequency

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Coastguard staff in Bridlington scrambled a crew to intercept a taxi in Newcastle that was blocking an emergency radio frequency.

The red-faced driver was heard arranging to pick up fares using Channel 16 – the maritime "mayday" frequency.

A source at Humber Coastguard told the Mail: "All we heard was this taxi driver talking about where to pick up fares."

"He was blocking the frequency, so we used our direction-finding technology to pinpoint his location."

"We then sent a coastguard vehicle to intercept the taxi in a street in Newcastle."

"He had no idea he was on the wrong frequency. It was a radio fault."

Humber Coastguard staff say they often use direction-finding equipment to find those broadcasting on wrong channels.

But the Maritime And Coastguard Agency has confirmed it is removing the "outdated" equipment from all of its centres.

A spokesman for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency said: "Removing the direction-finding equipment was not a decision we took lightly, but it is out of date. It was implemented in the 1980s."

Source; http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.u ... ticle.html

_________________
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Brummie Cabbie.

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WTF did this happen?

Surely there are safeguards in place to prevent straying onto radio frequencies used by emergency services!!

Me think he could end up in court on this one.

_________________
Kind regards,

Brummie Cabbie.

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Disagree with other members' views;
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They did say it was a radio fault and the driver had no idea about it.

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Grandad,

Tide must come in fast there

normally taxis are on frequencies very differant from the emergency services was this a case of a dodgy attempt at retuning a radio and if his radio was off frequency how could he have talked to base ?

or was it a case of unlicensed use of radios and they happened upon the coastguard frequency not realising what they had set their radios to ?

I remember a few years ago when Pilots were complaining about Taxi Drivers coming over their radios in the cockpits when over a certain part of the Country. Can't think for the life of me where I read it.

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Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

Believe me, don't get Mercury X2

There is enough traffic on ch16, both coastguard and non-coastguard to know if you are on the wrong channel.

My guess is a fault on the radio shifted it's tuning a long way along the spectrum. However, at the same time the driver must have jammed on his PTT switch somehow.

Chris may know more about the relative frequencies although they will be well seperated in the spectrum, IMHO.

Marine band is from 156 to 164 MHz. Channel 16 on the Marine Band is at 156.8 MHz - this is the "Calling" and the "Emergency" Channel.

I believe that CB radio is at about 28 MHz.

I don't have a clue what band any licensed "Taxi" radios work on, but it shouldn't be near the Marine or Aero bands I would have thought.

In high summer "Radio Propagation" can affect radios - I have listened to Taxi's in Birmingham all day long on CH 16 - 25 miles South of Plymouth! - Out of sight of land. This is the upper atmosphere bending and reflecting the signals.

This story sound like a very poor attempt at radio tuning to me.

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Chris The Fish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdlyi5mc ... re=related

"skip" as its known, can bounce signals of low power around the world, hence australian sidebanders on UK CB frequencies (am not fm) also "harmonics" (multiplications of the actual frequency) can transmit onto 2x 3x 4x the that intended

its doubtful the taxi driver had anything to do with it or even knew what was going on