Section 80.1117 - Procedure for receipt and acknowledgement of distress alerts(a) Normally, distress calls received using digital selective calling are only acknowledged using a DSC acknowledgement by a coast station. Ships should delay any acknowledgement in order to give sufficient time for a coast station to acknowledge the call. In cases where no acknowledgement has been heard and no distress traffic has been heard, the ship should transmit a distress alert relay to the coast station. Upon advice from the Rescue Coordination Center, the ship may transmit a DSC acknowledgement call to stop it from being repeated. Acknowledgement by digital selective calling of receipt of a distress alert in the terrestrial services must comply with ITU-R M.541-9 (incorporated by reference, see§ 80.7 ).(b) Acknowledgement through a satellite of receipt of a distress alert from a ship earth station must be sent immediately (see § 80.1119 ).(c) Acknowledgement by radiotelephony of receipt of a distress alert from a ship station or a ship earth station must be given in the following form:(1) The distress signal MAYDAY;(2) The call sign or other identification of the station sending the distress message, spoken three times;(3) The words THIS IS (or DE spoken as DELTA ECHO in case of language difficulties);(4) The call sign or other identification of the station acknowledging receipt, spoken three times;(5) The word RECEIVED (or RRR spoken as ROMEO ROMEO ROMEO in case of language difficulties);(6) The distress signal MAYDAY.(d) The acknowledgement by direct-printing telegraphy of receipt of a distress alert from a ship station must be given in the following form: (1) The distress signal MAYDAY;(2) The call sign or other identification of the station sending the distress alert;(4) The call sign or other identification of the station acknowledging receipt of the distress alert;(6) The distress signal MAYDAY.(e) The acknowledgement by direct-printing telegraphy of receipt of a distress alert from a ship earth station must be given by the coast earth station receiving the distress alert by retransmitting the ship station identity of the ship transmitting the distress alert.57 FR 9065, Mar. 16, 1992, as amended at 68 FR 46980 , Aug. 7, 2003; 73 FR 4491 , Jan. 25, 2008; 76 FR 67618 , Nov. 2, 2011