International Code of Signals

Understanding and constructing maritime flag signals can be crucial in situations when all your electronics fails or you or the signaling station have language problems. This application contains the full International Code of Signals database and knows the proper signaling technique, including the usage of substitute and code flags. It has two main functions:

• interpret flag signals or
• show which flags should be hoisted for a given message.

In interpretation mode, flags are entered by selecting them from a list of flags on the right hand side of the screen. Selected flags are then inserted into the list of hoisted flags in the middle of the screen. This list can be edited, new elements can be inserted or existing ones can be removed from it. As you enter the flags a rough syntactical analysis runs on them and formal problems are reported.

When a message contains numerous additional information (e.g. coordinates, numbers, names of places) the complete message is sent in chunks, so called hoists. At the end of each hoist you have to check the completeness of the chunk. At the end, the whole message can be interpreted with all its additional information.

In send mode you can view and search the generic and medical part of the complete ICS in two independent lists. Both lists are structured the same way as the original ICS book, you can open/close chapters, sections, scroll them and read each message. The most powerful part is that you can search both lists for any term. After the search, only those messages (and their section and chapter descriptors) remain in the list which were matching the search criteria. Tapping on a message element will select it for sending. After entering values for additional information you can let the application generate the flags in chunks of hoists.

The usage of the application is very easy and self-intuitive. The search is very robust and works as a full-text search, hunting for matches in any part of the ICS database.

Currently only the English ICS is supported. If you find any mistakes in the database or want your localized version included, please pick up contact with the author.