Everything in HMCG Pager, step by step.

What setup asks for

1. SMS: pages arrive as texts, and your responses and availability go back as texts. The app only acts on texts from HMCG numbers.
2. Notifications: so the alert can show and keep ringing.
3. Do Not Disturb: on the next screen find HMCG Pager and switch it on, so a page sounds at night or on silent.
4. Full-screen alerts: switch HMCG Pager on, so the page fills the screen even when locked.
5. Battery: tap Allow, so Android doesn't put the app to sleep and delay a page.
6. Your alert tone: pick a Pager tone, or come back to it later.
7. Availability: texts HMCG 8 or 9 for you. You can skip this.

You can tap Skip for now on any step. Settings › Run setup again goes through the whole thing again.

"Restricted setting" or no SMS pop-up

Android 13 and later blocks SMS for apps not installed from the Play Store. Setup notices and shows the way through:

1. Tap Open App info.
2. Tap ⋮ in the top right, then Allow restricted settings, and confirm.
3. Tap Permissions › SMS › Allow.
4. Come back to the app. The step ticks itself off.

The top of Settings tells you if a page will get through.

• Green: Ready for pages. Monitoring is on and everything's allowed.
• Orange: Not ready. Tap it to see the checklist. Anything orange has a Fix button that opens the right Android screen.
• The SMS monitoring switch pauses the app. When it's off, pages are ignored, so leave it on.
• Stop double alerts: your normal Messages app beeps for HMCG texts as well. Tap Open Messages notification settings and turn notifications off for the HMCG conversations. The pager still alarms for every page.

The alarm sounds through Do Not Disturb and the page fills the screen, even on the lock screen, with the RV on a map.

1. Read the GIN, what's happened and where. Navigate opens Google Maps or Waze to the RV.
2. Drag the white dot to your answer: To RV, Station, Delayed or Not attending. It has to reach the edge to count. Let go early and nothing is sent.
3. The app texts the number for your answer back to the number that paged you, and opens the live job.
4. Not ready to answer? Tap Silence – respond later in the app. The alarm stops; open the app to respond from the live job.

• The alarm keeps going until you answer or silence it.
• The torch can flash with the alarm: Settings › Alerts & sounds.
• Pages can be texted on to a second phone: see Forwarding.

From the top

1. The page: GIN, what's happened, where, and the RV grid reference.
2. My response: what you sent and when. Tap Change to send a different one.
3. Navigate, Who's going (the response board) and WhatsApp.
4. Response: how many are attending, To RV, Station and Delayed, and which OIC-qualified officers are coming. It refreshes every two minutes.
5. Incident summary: the team tasking and the other agencies attending.
6. Weather & wind and the Tidal flow & drift button.
7. The map, and every text received for the job.
8. what3words for the incident and your own position, if it's turned on.
9. SOS: hold for three seconds. It texts 0 to A&T and alerts the Network Commander.
10. Close job: only if a stand-down never arrives.

The speaker button at the top reads the job out loud. The i button opens the response board.

Tap Who's going on a live job. The A&T incident summary page opens as a phone screen and refreshes every minute.

• The total attending, a bar of everyone's response, and your status at the top.
• The RV with its grid reference and coordinates. Navigate, or Share the RV as text.
• A card per team with the vehicle phone, and everyone by callsign, coloured by response, with their skills.
• Tap a callsign to save a name. "04" becomes a name on this and every future job, and in the spoken summary.
• what3words for the RV and your own position is at the bottom, if it's turned on.

Open it with Tidal flow map under the tides on Home, or Tidal flow & drift at the incident on a live job.

1. Read the A guide only message and tap I understand. It shows every time.
2. Arrows point where the water is going. Faster water means longer, thicker, warmer arrows: pale blue under 0.5 knots, blue 0.5–1, amber 1–2, red over 2. Zoom in to read the knots on each one.
3. Drag the slider, or tap −1h / Now / +1h, to look up to 6 hours back or 12 hours ahead.
4. Tap the sea anywhere to read the flow at that spot.
5. On a live job you also get the flow at the incident, a chart of the last 6 hours, and a rough drift track: a dashed purple line from the page time to the slider time, with a dot each hour and a distance such as "≈ 1.9 nm towards W".
6. Home (top right) goes straight back to the app's home screen. The back arrow returns to the job.

The model data (about 3 MB) is downloaded once and kept on the phone, so it still works with poor signal. Tap the refresh button to update it.

Write up a job

1. Tap Jobs at the bottom. Jobs are grouped by month, newest first. Each card shows the date, GIN, paged → stood-down times, how long it ran and how many attended.
2. Tap a job. Times shows when you were paged, when you were stood down, the duration and your own response.
3. Location shows the place and grid reference.
4. Who attended lists everyone team by team, with their response. Show not attending / no reply lists the rest.
5. Type in Write-up notes. It saves as you type, and the card then shows Written up.
6. Tap the copy button (top right) for a ready-made summary to paste into your report.
7. When the write-up's done, tap Delete this job and confirm.

Choose a tone

1. Go to Settings › Alerts & sounds.
2. Tap Page alert, Incident summary or Stand down.
3. Tap a tone to select it and hear it. ▶ plays it again, ■ stops it. It's saved straight away.
4. Tap Done.

Upload your own tone from the phone

1. Get the sound file onto your phone: save it from an email or WhatsApp, or download it.
2. In the tone picker, tap Upload a tone file.
3. Pick the file. Look in Downloads, WhatsApp or Drive.
4. It's copied into the app and selected. It shows under Your tones from then on.

Copy tones from a computer

1. Open the app once so it creates its Tones folder.
2. Plug the phone into the computer with a USB cable. On the phone, tap the USB notification and choose File transfer.
3. On the computer, open the phone's storage and go to Android/media/com.example.pager/Tones.
4. Drag your MP3 files into that folder.
5. In the app, open the tone picker. The files show under Your tones.

Use one of the phone's tones

Tap Choose a phone tone for any ringtone, alarm or notification sound on the phone. Phone default uses whatever the phone's alarm (or notification) sound is set to.

• MP3 works best. WAV, OGG and M4A also work.
• Keep it short and loud. A few seconds is plenty: the page alert repeats until you respond.
• If a tone file is deleted or won't play, the app uses the phone's alarm sound, so you never miss a page.

Forward pages to a second phone

1. Go to Settings › Forwarding & WhatsApp.
2. Tap + next to Forward Contacts and add the number.

Every attendance request is texted on to those numbers. Summaries (which carry your personal MATS link) and stand-downs aren't forwarded.

Share on WhatsApp

• On a live job, tap WhatsApp. It opens with your response and today's tides written. Pick your team group and tap Send.
• Open WhatsApp after I respond does this automatically. It's off unless you turn it on.
• Include today's tide times adds the tides to the message.

Navigation app

Choose Google Maps or Waze for Navigate in Settings › Maps & what3words.

Each row shows how it's set, so you can check your setup without opening anything.