Terms of use

These terms are the agreement between you and us when you use HelmHalo, the marine VHF radio simulator at helmhalo.app and app.helmhalo.app. Please read them before you create an account. By creating an account or using HelmHalo you accept them. If you don't accept them, please don't use HelmHalo.

1. Who we are

HelmHalo is run by John Phillips in the United Kingdom. In these terms “we”, “us” and “our” mean HelmHalo and the person who runs it, and “you” means the person using it. You can reach us at hello@johnphillips.uk.

2. What HelmHalo is, and isn't

• HelmHalo simulates marine VHF radio conversations so you can practise radio procedure. Its scenarios, stations, boats and marinas are made up for training, even where they use real place names.
• It isn't an SRC course or assessment, and using it doesn't lead to any qualification. To get a Short Range Certificate you need to pass an approved course and assessment.
• It isn't a radio and can't reach anyone. In an emergency, use your real radio, or call 999 or 112 and ask for the Coastguard.
• HelmHalo is independent. No coastguard, regulator, course provider or awarding body runs, endorses or checks it.
• The stations' replies and your debriefs are produced by artificial intelligence. They're written to follow the harmonised SRC syllabus (CEPT ERC/REC 31-04), but they can be wrong, incomplete or different from what you're taught. Where they disagree with your course, your instructor, your radio's manual or official guidance, follow those.

3. Your account

• You need an account to use the app. Use an email address you can receive mail at, and keep your password to yourself.
• An account is for one person. Don't share it or let anyone else use your sessions.
• You must be at least 13. If you're under 18, a parent or guardian needs to agree to these terms for you, and they are responsible for any plan bought on your account.
• You're responsible for what happens on your account. If you think someone else has used it, tell us straight away.

4. Plans, payment and sessions

• What each plan includes. The Free plan includes the radio lessons, the free scenarios and 3 sessions a month. What Monthly and Annual include, and their prices, are on the pricing page. Prices include VAT where it applies.
• Sessions. A session is one run of a scenario, from the briefing to the debrief, and it counts when the run starts. Radio lessons don't use sessions. Your allowance resets at midnight UTC on the first day of each month, and unused sessions don't carry over.
• Radar add-on. Radar is a separate subscription, monthly or yearly, that you can buy on its own or alongside a plan. It renews, can be cancelled and is refunded in the same way as a plan, independently of it: cancelling one doesn't cancel the other. Radar lessons don't use sessions.
• Payment. Paid plans are paid by card through Stripe, our payment provider. We never see or store your full card details.
• Renewal. Monthly renews every month and Annual every year, on the date you first subscribed, until you cancel. We'll remind you by email before an Annual plan renews.
• Cancelling. You can cancel at any time from your account. Your plan carries on until the end of the period you've paid for, then your account moves to the Free plan. We don't refund part of a period you've started, except as set out in section 5 or where the law requires it.
• Price changes. We may change our prices. If you already pay for a plan, we'll tell you at least 30 days before a new price applies to you, and it will only apply from your next renewal. If you don't want to pay it, cancel before then.
• Discount codes. A discount code works as described when it's given out. It has no cash value and can be withdrawn if it's shared outside the group it was meant for.

5. Changing your mind

If you buy a paid plan as a consumer, you can cancel it within 14 days of first buying it and get your money back. Email hello@johnphillips.uk or cancel from your account and tell us you want a refund. Your plan starts straight away because you ask it to, so if you've used it during those 14 days we may keep an amount in proportion to the time it was active. We'll refund the rest to the card you paid with within 14 days of hearing from you.

This right is for consumers. It doesn't apply to school plans, which are business contracts.

6. Schools and instructors

• A school plan is bought by a sea school, club, college or instructor (“the school”) for its students. The school is our customer for that plan, and the person who buys it agrees to these terms on the school's behalf.
• Each student place gives one student 30 days of practice from the day they join. After that the place is free for another student.
• The school should share its join codes only with its own students, and is responsible for how its instructors and students use HelmHalo under the plan.
• Students who join a class need their own account and accept these terms. By joining, a student agrees that the school's instructors can see their practice, scores and debriefs for that class.
• School plans renew and can be cancelled in the same way as individual plans (section 4). School accounts aren't open yet; these terms will apply to them when they are.

7. Using HelmHalo properly

You agree not to:

• use HelmHalo to break the law, or to harass or harm anyone;
• try to get into accounts, data or parts of HelmHalo that aren't yours, or probe, test or get round its security;
• copy, resell, re-host or scrape HelmHalo or its scenarios, or use bots or other automated tools on it (search engines indexing the public website are fine);
• try to make the stations produce offensive, harmful or misleading material, or use HelmHalo for anything other than practice;
• record and reuse the station voices outside HelmHalo;
• overload HelmHalo on purpose, or get round its limits;
• take HelmHalo's software apart, except where the law allows you to.

If you do, we may suspend or close your account (section 11).

8. What you say, and what we keep

• When you hold to talk, your speech is turned into text as you speak. We keep the text of your transmissions, the stations' replies, and your debriefs and scores, so you can look back at them and see your progress. We don't keep recordings of your voice.
• What you say stays yours. You allow us to process it to run HelmHalo for you, which includes passing it to the speech and AI services that power the stations, and to use it in anonymous, combined form (for example, the mistakes people make most) to improve the scenarios and debriefs.
• Please don't give other people's personal details on the radio beyond what a scenario asks for.
• We look after your personal information in line with UK data protection law. Email hello@johnphillips.uk with any question about it.

9. Our content

• HelmHalo's software, scenarios, text, design, logo, station voices and the debriefs it produces belong to us or to the people we license them from.
• While you keep to these terms, you may use HelmHalo for your own practice. A school may also use it in its teaching, with the students on its plan. This permission is personal to you and can't be passed on.
• You're welcome to quote our guides, with a link back to the page you quoted.

10. Changes to HelmHalo

• We aim to keep HelmHalo running, but it may sometimes be unavailable, for example during maintenance or when a service we rely on has a problem.
• We may change, add or retire scenarios and features. If a change would significantly reduce what you've paid for, we'll tell you before it happens, and you can cancel and get back the unused part of your current period.

11. Ending this agreement

• You can stop using HelmHalo at any time. To close your account, email hello@johnphillips.uk. Closing your account doesn't refund the rest of a paid period, so cancel your plan first if you're paying for one.
• We may suspend or close your account straight away if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms, or if the law requires it.
• We may also close your account, or stop running HelmHalo, for any other reason. If we do, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice and refund the unused part of any paid period.

12. Our responsibility to you

• If we break these terms, we're responsible for loss or damage you suffer that was a foreseeable result. We're not responsible for loss that wasn't foreseeable.
• HelmHalo is a training aid. Never use it for navigation, for safety decisions or to communicate at sea. We're not responsible for what happens if you do.
• Individual plans are for personal use, so we're not responsible to you for business losses, such as lost income or lost opportunities.
• For a school plan, we're not responsible for indirect loss or lost profits, and our total responsibility in any 12 months is limited to what the school paid us in those 12 months.
• Nothing in these terms limits our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law doesn't allow us to limit. Nor do they affect your legal rights as a consumer: for example, under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 digital content must be as described, fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms, for example when we add features or the law changes. The date at the top shows when they last changed. If a change affects you significantly, we'll tell you by email or in the app at least 30 days before it applies to you. If you don't agree with it, you can cancel before then, and if you've paid for a period that runs past that date we'll refund the unused part.

14. Complaints and disputes

• If something's wrong, email hello@johnphillips.uk and we'll do our best to put it right.
• These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. You can bring a claim in the courts of England and Wales or, if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, in the courts where you live.

15. The legal small print

• We may transfer this agreement to whoever takes over HelmHalo. We'll tell you if we do, and it won't reduce your rights. You need our agreement to transfer your account to someone else.
• This agreement is between you and us. Nobody else can enforce it.
• If a court decides that part of these terms can't be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don't enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later.