8 minutes ago by ajmarsh
My personal favorite from my time in the Marines didn't seem to make the list. Interrogative. Nothing more frustrating than to ask a time-sensitive question and be met with silence.
9 hours ago by chacha102
My favorite part of this article is the reason for saying "SAY AGAIN" instead of "REPEAT".
The word "REPEAT" should not be used in place of "SAY AGAIN",
especially in the vicinity of naval or other firing ranges,
as "REPEAT" is an artillery proword defined in ACP 125 U.S.
Supp-2(A) with the wholly different meaning of "request for the
same volume of fire to be fired again with or without corrections
or changes" (e.g., at the same coordinates as the previous round).[12]
2 hours ago by hobos_delight
Correct. I was in the Royal Australian Artillery corps for a number of years, and RATEL procedures (across all corps) drill this into you.
However it is unlikely to occur in practice - the artillery battery will (generally) be on a separate radio net, and the proword will only be applicable if you're in an active fire mission - though it's good to be safe. My wife still gets frustrated with my use of SAY AGAIN.
When you get a good sig on each end, the speed of fire mission comms is a thing of beauty - and once the mission is opened both ends will drop all callsigns.
2 minutes ago by ronjouch
What's "a good sig"? And what do you mean by "will drop all callsigns"?
9 hours ago by thanhhaimai
Sometimes in real actions, you don't have that luxury for long phrases. For example, in professional gaming (Overwatch), you don't say "keep focus fire on Lucio". You only say "Lulululululu..." And keep repeating that.
Not like gaming is comparable to real combat, but a hundred milliseconds is a lot in life & death situations.
9 hours ago by chacha102
That is absolutely a fair point. Speaking as someone who does not have military experience, I can't speak to it. But it would make sense that if you have the time to wait for them to repeat the phrase, that the longer phrase "SAY AGAIN" could be used.
Whereas "REPEAT" might not involve the time luxury.
5 hours ago by remarkEon
Been a while, but thereās an entire script you read when calling in artillery. Itās designed to be simple, so the dumbest joe can figure it out, and verifiable so that the chances for mistakes or releasing a round by accident are minimized.
9 hours ago by ARandomerDude
When it's bad, you want a VERY quick way of saying "shoot it again."
The "repeat" vs "say again" distinction is so ingrained that I've been out of the military for a decade and I still always, only say "say again." I don't do it on purpose, it's just part of me now.
9 hours ago by JackFr
My father, fifty years out of the navy, would still always say āSay againā if he didnāt hear you.
9 hours ago by Arnavion
I also use "say again" in regular conversation, and I've never been in the military. I picked it up from living in Singapore for a few years. Some of the short, simplified, not-always-grammatical phrases used in Singlish work great for communication - distinct enough to be understood despite the speaker's accent, few fluff words so that they can be parsed easily and spoken easily. Very close to the goals of the military and NATO in that regard.
4 hours ago by pm3003
We often forbid operators the use of "repeat", and we find ourselves using only "say again" on the phone, especially when the link is bad or the other speaker difficult to understand. Imagine speaking to a Pakistani or a Portuguese over a satellite phone.
6 hours ago by inamberclad
When I'm stressed, I go back to saying affirmative/negative instead of yes/no.
9 hours ago by chacha102
Fantastic. I was just telling the commentor before you that I do not have a military background. I'm glad you could weigh in. That makes complete sense.
5 hours ago by eitland
Interesting to know.
I often use say again, but I use it because of of Limoncelly and Hogans book, "the Practice of Systems and Networks Administration" where they (or someone they refer to) suggest it works better in noisy environments.
I guess they have worked with someone with experience from the army..?
6 hours ago by blahedo
The thing that jumped out at me, and isn't explained in this article or the linked ones, is that all of the distress-related prowords are French and none of the others are. Specifically, they're French-derived but spelled as if in English ("MAYDAY", "SEELONCE").
Why?
4 hours ago by mjlee
See also PAN-PAN, from the French 'panne' meaning breakdown.
The story I was told behind the origin of these was that they evolved from British <-> French air traffic and was a reasonably logical thing that everybody agreed on and could pronounce intelligibly for the other party.
Edit to add: English is the official international language for naval/aviation communication. Having really important words in another language makes them stand out and hard to say by mistake.
5 hours ago by pm3003
- French was the language of the ITU and its predecessors. - On HF radio you need words that can be distinguished very clearly and not mistaken for somethkng else.
3 hours ago by supernova87a
I think it's to help Brad Pitt when he tries to speak those lines in his Southern accent.
ARREEVA-DAIRCHEE
7 minutes ago by parhamn
"It's more than 500 feet out? over."
6 hours ago by akavel
I was surprised that in the communications during the recent Dragon docking, they seemed to have the initial station designations reversed: first stating who is calling, followed by who is called. Also when Dragon crew was reporting poor call quality over the hardline, I don't think they used the phrases listed in the article.
edit: and also how/why it took them so long to resolve the apparent misunderstanding at some point, where the Russian crew on the ISS seemed to believe they were being called out by the ground crew.
2 hours ago by jedimastert
I unfortunately didn't get to watch the launch or docking, but I know in (american) ham radio and CW (morse code) usually on the opening/first transmission your callsign is the first thing you say. If you callsign was K1QT, for example, you might say:
K1QT calling CQ CQ
K1QT calling K1HTL5 hours ago by jerrre
Do you have a link to this communication?
3 hours ago by akavel
Uhhh, so as to the initial order of called vs. caller, it seems they're actually correct, and it was actually me being civilian and having reverse expectation; sorry!
As to the hardline related communications, I'm trying to find a good point in the recording. For now I managed to find the eventual successful contact attempt here: https://youtu.be/zNklfC6jgBs?t=10746; I'll try to rewind and find esp. the earlier Endeavour responses & the Russian responses.
edit: Ok, here's some early fun with Russians: https://youtu.be/zNklfC6jgBs?t=6085, not yet sure if that's the 1st one but definitively a sample of what I meant. Still looking for more. edit 2: A bit more just seconds later: https://youtu.be/zNklfC6jgBs?t=6616
an hour ago by jagged-chisel
In your link to t=6085, I can't make out what the Russian voice is saying until he's counting. Can someone transcribe?
5 hours ago by tankenmate
If you check SpaceX's stream on YouTube, they check the hardline communications with the Dragon capsule multiple times in the hour or so after hard capture.
8 hours ago by quickthrower2
Can anyone comment where the common phrase "OVER AND OUT" comes from, if it is not used in this scheme at all.
7 hours ago by asperous
Most likely from movies and other pop culture. Real radio code is intentionally stiff so movie screenwriters try and make it sound right but more friendly.
3 hours ago by wdfx
Ive heard that it is essentially a joke or insult. You are saying "you can carry on talking but I'm not listening".
6 hours ago by sorokod
This probably originates from half duplex communication where the sending side indicates they are done sending by saying over. In the military, the ranking side is entitled to end the conversation by adding "out"
8 hours ago by abecode
Not 100% but I learned that it's bad form because "out" subsumes "over" so saying them together is redundant.
7 hours ago by toxik
The linked page very clearly states they are opposites. Over indicates an expectation for response, out does the opposite.
6 hours ago by quietbritishjim
Not just redundant. "Over" means you're done talking now, so you shouldn't say anything else afterwards, even "and out".
6 hours ago by inamberclad
People should also adopt the "five" vs "niner" idiom from aviation to disambiguate those two numbers.
Fun fact, the donkey that was the model for Donkey in Shrek was named Niner, and lived in Palo Alto.
9 minutes ago by OJFord
> People should also adopt the "five" [sic] vs [sic] "niner" idiom
I assume you mean 'fife' and? Also not just from aviation, general (military) radio, and other uses of the NATO phonetic alphabet.
It used to be fi-ive (rhyming 'I seive') but changed, I believe/as I recall, due to sounding too close to 'fire'.
10 hours ago by combatentropy
Since this is Hacker News, I can only assume that the one who posted this is suggesting that we should have incorporated some of this vocabulary into our network protocols --- which would have been utterly cool.
3 hours ago by pjc50
We have our own: the RFC language of SHOULD and MUST.
The obsolete TELNET protocol ( https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc854 ) has DO/DONT/WILL/WONT which match up nicely.
6 hours ago by Jaruzel
WILCO.
5 hours ago by Someone
Network protocols? I was thinking videoconferencing calls.
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