Whilst at sea all vessels should maintain continuous watch on VHF CH 16. This facility allows the operator to monitor VHF CH 16 and any number of other VHF channels in a rapidly changing sequence. The receiver stays on the channel on which the transmission is being made. The channel on which the receiver stays could be manually advanced to the next channel in the scan sequence or inhibited from the scan cycle.

Practise on the VHF radio simulator

To switch on the Scan function, press the Scan softkey. The Scan function cycles the VHF radio sequentially through each enabled channel, pausing when a transmission is received on any of the channels. The receiver stays on the channel on which the transmission is being made. The channel on which the receiver stays could be:

• advanced: press the Adv softkey to manually advance to the next channel in the scan sequence,
• inhibited: press Inh softkey to inhibit the channel from the scan cycle (rather than pressing Adv softkey each cycle).

To exit Scan mode, press the C key or 16 key.

Channels can also be inhibited (and re-enabled) when the Scan function is not running. Select the channel to be inhibited, then press and hold the Scan softkey (double beep). To re-enable an inhibited channel into the scan cycle, select the channel to be enabled then press and hold down the Scan softkey (double beep).