Make the appropiate call and allow the professionals to deal with what THEY are trained to do. They do it bloody well!
That might be the case in the UK and a short distance from the shore. Not the case further afield, where somebody might be quite grateful for being fished out of the water at all.
And in most of the world, there is no S&R at all. You have to hope you can raise somebody, with an EPIRB going off or by calling up an airliner 35000ft above you.
Milthorpe Tower G-ABCD have intercepted MAYDAY from G-BJRD
I say again G-BJRD Cessna 172 engine failure forced landing 10
miles west of Wicken VOR, 1000 feet descending, heading 120, IMC
rating, over
Curious why "over" if this is on VHF.
I think somebody doing fishing out of an orange liferaft needs their head examined.
But fair enough, if you can get through to somebody with a "PAN" then why not.
The most useful thing, actually, would be knowing which button on the GPS to press to set a user waypoint.