Utility Radio
Review

A Radio Operator’s Life,
And A Response To Last Month’s Combs’ Article

by Joe Cooper

We’ve heard from British contributor David Hopcroft on several occasions, particularly about coastal station GRZ. This time David will provide us with some insight into the reality of a radio operator’s life—that it’s mainly long hours of boredom with moments of crisis thrown in randomly (see “On Passage: Memories of a British Radio Operator at Sea”).

In addition, Craig Rose has put together a response to Bob Combs’ critique of Craig’s “More Than Just Voices” piece.
How about you? Do you have a story or two to tell about your experiences, either past or present, working in the field of utility radio? How about an opinion to share? Let’s hear from you.

And, as always, we have logs for you. Send in your log contributions, too!

Reader’s Logs

One of the things you will notice in this month’s logs is the large amount of information contained in each one through the use of standard abbreviations. I’ve been getting some feedback that many people do not have access to a good list of these short forms so I’m including a table of some of the most common abbreviations used in UTE logs. Do you know of any others that may have been missed here? If so, please send them along.

Likewise, there’s a lot of military action taking place in the Middle East right now. While you know what position about publishing sensitive information that could comprise national security or the troops overseas (and domestically as well) I would encourage you still share your frequencies. Monitoring is still legal, as long as sensitive content is not divulged.

Remember that all frequencies are in kilohertz and times are Universal (Z).

0000: STATION, Anytown, USA, summary of traffic heard in MODE at 0000 Z (Z), personal comments here. (JC)

2749: Canadian CG-Stephenville (OM FF), 0216Z USB w/MIB for the Maritimes. (RP3)

6986.5: AAR5BD (Army MARS), 1300Z USB w/AAR5HC, AAR5MI in net chat. (RP3)

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