Yeah, funny thing about the NSA..They've been able to read everyone's email for YEARS.  It only recently became a news story.

When I was overseas I used to see these PSAs talking about OpSec where everyone was sayings"Hello Ivan" or "Hello Boris" to let you know that the Russians were listening.

These days I've got a few friends who are vets as well and we through out a random "F*** DIRNSA" every now and then.  For those who don't know, that's Director - NSA.  A three or four star officer who runs it.

I'm probably on more than one No-Fly list!!  :)

CommsPrepper and SouthernPrepper1 are two of my favorites in addition to MainePrepper.

I'm lucky in that I've got a VHF gateway about 5 miles from my house.  Barring any major issues I should be able to hit it with no problem!

Luck,

Ha!  I know this one!  18 is the number of words (or groups) in the body of the message.  Error checking.

Nice to meetcha, Luck, BTW!  Richard here!

Yeah, my wife's idea of roughing it is having to use the regular DVD player and not the BlueRay!   ;D

Quote from: WA4STO on September 09, 2013, 12:18:18 PM
KF5RHI sent me the following yesterday:

----------
NR 0001 TEST W KF5RHI 30 FORT WORTH TX OCT 1
KF5RHI
BT
TIMOTHY JENSEN KD0WNV CHECKED IN AT SOUTH FORT WORTH SHELTER 0715 AND DEPARTED
0915 ENROUTE TO FAMILY IN AUSTIN TX
BT
RICHARD SLUSHER FORT WORTH TX

Questions: 
1.  First line you had "30" after your call sign.  What's that?
2.  Was the message body done properly.  Was wondering if the time should be local or   
    UTC/Zulu.  Should the date be included?  Formatting?

-----------------

Richard, your effort was fabulous.  I particularly liked the thought process you used to make the return message so very believable and applicable to the drill.

1.  The "30" is the "check", that is, the number of words or groups between the two "BT"s.  So in the case of the message I sent to you, a check of 30 would be accurate, whereas your message should have a check of 20. 

2.  The body/text of the message was perfect.  It stipulated what you, the originator, was trying to get across without being too wordy.  If I was the agency or family on the receiving end, I'd be delighted at the news.  Job well done.

3.  As for the time, I believe it's accurate to say that if you don't stipulate the time zone, it's thought to be "local".  If you wanted to make it zulu time, you would format it like so:    0940z   which would be one word in the "check".  Otherwise, I think it's assumed to be local time.

You wouldn't need to include "fort worth" in the signature since it's already stated in the preamble.  Having said that, I see that *I* include 'wilber nebraska' when my wife signs my outgoing.  Go figure...

Again, nice job.  73

Luck

Starting to get the hang of it...

So the second line where I had MY callsign was right?

Yeah, I was truly amazed at the amount of junk people brought out to the site.  It's like they tried to pack up their entire house.  I had my weapons bag that holds my tent, a sleeping bag and my backpack radio...and an Igloo cooler full of water because it was about 100 degrees outside!

My team leader in Germany was a Russian linguist.  That's what I wanted too; but the Army in it's infinite wisdom gave me German.  I can still speak it reasonably well.  I was down in Dealey Plaza in Dallas about a year ago and help some German tourists get where they needed to go while my stunned in-laws sat back in awe.  :)

All things considered, I thoroughly enjoyed my active duty time.  I loved going to the field.  Out of an 8 week span 6 of it would be out at Hohenfels, Grafenwoehr or doing border ops, 1 week was spent "recovering" and the last week getting ready to go back out.

When I went out to Field Day this year my wife asked me, "Aren't you going to take a change of clothes?"  I told her, "I'm only going out for the weekend!"  When we started moving forward in the Sand Box I wore the same uniform for 6 weeks so a weekend n a tent is nothing!

Sorry, the name doesn't ring a bell; but if she was a Sergeant back then she wouldn't have been hangin' out with us lowly PFCs either.

Quote from: Archangel320420 on September 08, 2013, 11:15:50 PM
One quick thing, RHI. My daughter was in ASA and was in Berlin during the wall coming down. She related stories about being in those mobile huts along the border. She tells me often that I am a very strange person and she found all ditty boopers in Collection/and or/DF to be. We are all a strange bunch according to her and pretty much a gross bunch of animals. She did not think it mattered if they were Navy, Army, or Air Force. Ha! Cracks me up. Berlin must have had a combined service post.

Hmm...sounds like she and I have seen some of the same places!  I had 6 or 8 women in my class at intel school that all got Berlin while us boys all went to tactical units.  I landed in Stuttgart Germany on January 3, 1990.

We teased the "girls" telling them their first detail was going to be to repaint the bullseyes on the rooves of the bunkers for the Russian artillery spotters!  Almost had one of them in tears!

On the day East and West Germany got back together I was up on the border at a facility that was so close that on a clear morning you could look across the valley and watch the EAST GERMAN border guards walking their german shepherds along the fenceline.

Nice!!  :)

For those of us new to message traffic I found a primer...

     http://www.w7arc.com/nts/

Funny you should mention "pervs"...one of the more "interesting" things that happened in my unit during Desert Shield / Desert Storm was when we recorded a 45 minute obscene phone made to the AT&T phone center in Rhiyadh Saudi Arabia from Georgia (the state not the country).  When we got ready to head back to Germany after the war we had to do a system check of our jammer before loading it on the ship.  We tuned into the freq the that AFN was broadcasting on and jammed it with that phone call!  :)

Ahhhh...to be young again!  :)

Hey RadioRay! 

I'm an ex-intel puke too!  I was in Germany during REFORGER '90 and saw a news story on AFN (Armed Forces Network for those who were wondering) where they were doing a story on the "Unsung Heroes of REFORGER".  They did a story on one of the ESM teams.  I almost had a coronary when they showed the inside of a TRQ-32V2 mobile receiver DF system, the exact same system I was serving on at the time.  Then the part that REALLY blew my mind, "...and here's some live intercept coming from somewhere in East Germany!" A LOT of heads rolled over that one!