Cabbage Crates in the Briny

There is a classic Monty Python sketch where a bunch of RAF types are talking ten to the dozen and nobody understands a word of what was said. "Sorry, Old Boy, just don’t understand your banter…"

Air Comms have improved a great deal but what would I know, the last plane I flew on was so old, I sat next to the rear gunner. "What’s the problem, Chalkie old boy?" "Sorry sir. I didn’t see you come in. He got clean away with it, you know, Sir" "Yes, I know. Heard it on the Ops Net. War is hell, Chalkie." "But after all these years, they still let him get away with it, Sir". "Get it out of your system, old thing".

"Thank you, Sir. Damn it all, Sir. In fact I’ll have a triple serving of damn with a damn on the side with roly-poly damn and custard to follow..."

"That’s enough I think, Chalkie. More than enough."

"Sorry, Sir. But AOR is getting a reputation for forefront HF technology and they still let him get away with that old rear gunner gag..."

There will be those who have come to our hobby from the Services. There will be pilots and ground crew who want to keep in touch. There will be listeners, fascinated by what they have heard on VHF via an AOR hand-held receiver. They may have something that is bothering them. The Tower gives them clearance for take off, sees them safely into the wild blue yonder then we never hear from them again...

Don’t worry, Chalkie old bean. Our aircraft never die, they simply go trans-oceanic.

As the VHF only provides a local service, they use HF on the long haul Stateside. Having come under control of its nearest ATC (Air Traffic Control), the aircraft sets its heading and calls the ACC (Area Control Centre) before requesting trans-oceanic clearance via the OACC (Oceanic Area Control Centre) on HF. We shall deal only with this HF traffic here, but for completeness the full chain of command on radio follows this pattern;

• Obtain take-off permission from the Tower and local weather
conditions either from the Tower or regional Volmet on VHF.
• Establish flight level and heading on leaving our airspace on VHF.
• Establish contact with nearest ACC on HF.
• On leaving range of ACC, establish contact with OACC on HF.
• Request trans-oceanic clearance.
• Establish contact with nearest ACC in your country of destination, HF circuits at present favouring Atlantic routes.
• Establish contact with recognised air lanes over that country via local ATC on VHF.
• Establish contact with airport tower on VHF.
• Request landing clearance and put down on allocated runway.

The chosen runway and terminal building are always the farthest from the car and space did not allow me to document the six hour delay due to the wrong kind of snow at Kennedy in our idealised scheme of things. Aircraft don’t fly high enough to avoid the effects of the ionosphere, so provision is made at 3, 5, 8 and 13Mhz to allow for the daily changes in reception and the longer term seasonal changes.

Our most audible OACC in the UK is at Shannon in Southern Eire. Signing as "Shanwick", the 5 and 8Mhz transmissions listed below are a good starting point during daylight conditions.

"Shannon Volmet" is a weather service. Announced in computerised speech, regular listening will show a fixed pattern to these broadcasts. Temperature, dewpoint - the temperature at which water vapour condenses back to water - wind speed and direction are followed by QNH. This is the ground setting for the altimeter. Cloud cover at fixed flight levels are given in "octas". Consider, if you will, the pilots field of vision to be from the centre of a large cake split into eight slices. Then "three octa" would be three eighths cloud cover at that height. The CAA would like to hear from any listener reporting "Hundreds and Thousands at one o’clock".

Stable weather conditions will be reported as "No-Sig" at the end of the bulletin. This is short for No Significant Change. The catchy heading of "Information in Plain Language Concerning Certain Meteorological Phenomena" or SIGMET is usually given in a single word, "Snow", "Rain", "Sleet", a plague of boils or what have you.

Some frequencies to try in USB:

5505KHz: Shannon Volmet.
5616KHz: Shannon ATC. Answerback on 8864.
5649KHz: Shannon ATC. Answerback on 8879.
6622KHz: Shannon ATC
5680KHz: Plymouth and Edinburgh Rescue Co-ordination Centres.