The Australian Volunteer Coast Guard Association looks after the safety of mariners across 2,512 km (1,560 miles) of the vast Australian coastline, far out to sea, and in many of the inland waterways. Each year they perform thousands of rescue activations. In emergencies they are called upon to perform Medivac responses to hard-to-reach islands and beaches and for crucial search and rescue functions of persons lost or missing at sea or in other waterways. Radio is used as the main communications system due to its reliability and reach.

Run entirely with the help of its 2,500 of volunteers, the not-forprofit organisation operates 107 rescue vessels, 147 radio bases under the control of 72 local flotillas, as well as 30 communication and display vans and 4WD vehicles. Coast Guard also maintains radio safety watches along many parts of the coastline and some inland waterways on VHF, 27MHz and HF frequencies with weather reports available on request.

Customer Profile

Australian Volunteer Coast Guard

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Application

Installation of DX-Altus Digital Radio Dispatch Management System at the
Volunteer Coast Guard Victoria Sandringham [Australia] Communications Centre for 24/7 operation and in 4 volunteer homes for afterhours service

Products Used

DX-Altus Digital Radio Management System
IP Gateways

Business Benefits

One Common Interface To Both VHF And HF Radio

Streamlined Operation

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Simplified Logging

Easy Access To Multiple Channels

Ability To Record Voice Conversations

The Challenge

Efficient Upgrade

The dedication of the volunteers supporting Coast Guard Victoria is unequivocal: in the past, to ensure availability 24 / 7 / 365, their key operators used 19” radios that were set up in their living rooms. Not exactly homely, but it allowed them to monitor communications on the organisation’s 23 radio channels after hours.

Coast Guard’s main Communication Centre in Sandringham, Victoria [Australia] is manned 7 days a week. Operators were previously using a single console with 9 radios and 9 individual microphones.

A second one was used for operator training, which was manned in times of heavy traffic, thereby duplicating equipment and requiring antennae switching.

Monitoring 23 radio channels with this setup was difficult, especially without being able to adjust individual channel volumes or to talk across multiple channels simultaneously

With their rescue missions in remote and hard-to-reach locations on land or out at sea, the challenge was to find a system that could connect volunteer teams quickly, easily and reliably without the need for a large equipment suite or operator training – one that could be scaled up or down with demand and numbers of operators.

Product Focus

RediTALK-Flex Dispatch

Interoperability
Connect technologies, protocols and vendors

Easy to Use
Clean and customizable User Interface

Flexibility
Use the power of IP to connect & unify anywhere

Duress & Emergency
See who calls where and when

cad dispatch

Geofencing
Easily set up zones & alerts to monitor movements

Radio Linking/Patching
Connect groups of radios in real time

Telephony
Receive and make calls and patch to radios

Location Services
Advanced people and asset tracking

The Setup

Network Diagram

Testimonials

Hear From our Customers

“The efficiency, reliability and productivity of our rescue mission communications has improved significantly, and our volunteers appreciate the user-friendly interface of the DX-Altus.”

Marcus Grinblat ESM, Vice Captain Communications Victoria State Council

The Solution

A Perfect Fit

Australian Volunteer Coast Guard realised that a robust, yet simple-to-use audio management system was needed. It had to be intuitive enough to operate that volunteers could use it easily, even if they only volunteered occasionally. Reliability and backups were considered crucial for Australian Volunteer Coast Guard when they decided on the ideal system that should manage their mission critical communications. The Omnitronics DXAltus was the obvious choice.

Managing marine communications with DX-Altus By installing an Omnitronics DX-Altus Radio Management System, the organisation significantly simplified its operation, even across remote bases. From the 19” radio stand-by-bases in the living rooms of after-hours personnel to snazzy setups with only a laptop and a microphone. Australian Volunteer Coast Guard has made it really easy for their teams, both at the main Communications Centre, and at home alike, to support the important work the
organisation is dedicated to.

Operators now use a single common microphone across all channels, rather than a desk full of individual ones, and they can monitor 23 channels at once (both VHF and HF) with easy and fast selection. Weather forecasts can now be recorded in advance with the canned voice message sent out to vessels periodically across multiple channels. To ensure uninterrupted communications at all times and locations, the organisation has implemented a multilayered network consisting of wired and wireless ADSL/ NBN and 900Mhz links to local repeaters separate from IP/
Service provider involvement.

Case Study

DX-Altus in Charge of 2,512km of Australian Coastline

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