Reporting your location if no DSC or it is not connected

There has been discussion of how to properly report your location from the GPS readings to a rescue agency so you can be found There are 3 different ways that location is notated and the difference in your actual location if misinterpreted at the other end can be a distance of more than 13 nautical miles. After Katrina the search and rescue and other workers had a lot of problems as different agencies used different approaches to reporting locations. Since that time there have been standards developed and adopted and this includes how to report a location using Latitude and Longitude coordinates.

This is the recommended approach from the US Government CISAR operations:

The standard Latitude/Longitude format for CISAR operations is Degrees, Decimal Minutes (DD° MM.mm’).

Latitude is always read and written first noting “North” since the U.S. is North of the Equator. Longitude is always read and written last noting “West” since the U.S. is West of the Prime Meridian.

When speaking Latitude and Longitude coordinates for 39° 36.06’N by 76° 51.42’W. Latitude and longitude is stated as:

“Three nine degrees, three six decimal zero six minutes North by seven six degrees, five one decimal four two minutes West.”

The words, “degrees,” “minutes,” and “decimal” must be spoken. The word "decimal" denotes the decimal point "." in the string of numbers.


Last summer a boat off Newport Beach in SoCal called for a tow and gave the numbers to the tow service which interpreted the 5 digits after the degrees as minutes and decimal minutes. Actually the numbers were for degrees and decimal degrees and the difference in position was about 10 miles.

With a DSC enabled VHF with GPS the location can be sent with the push of a button.

Very helpful info--thanks!

Slightly different subject, but I often use this site to convert GPS coordinates: http://www.earthpoint.us/convert.aspx
Because fishing spots are usually reported in degrees-minutes-seconds, like 37°35'00 123°24'00 (if they even give the degrees; usually it's a given based on location, so they just give the minutes & seconds).
Because I want to plug the coords into Google maps, but the search bar won't recognize this format, so I use the converter to get decimal-degrees, like 37.583333, -123.400000 ...which I enter into Google maps to drop a pin on the location.
Btw this is where a few big albacore were caught outta HMB this week!
https://www.google.com/maps/place/37%C2%B035'00.0%22N+123%C2%B024'00.0%22W/@37.5811824,-123.4,199192m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0


Edit: you know what's funny...I just realized you CAN enter degrees-minutes-seconds into the Google maps search bar...I just didn't know how to type the degrees symbol hahaha. So I guess I don't even need to convert my gPS coords anymore; just copy & paste the degrees symbol from Word or something haha...