Intrigue!!!: [MilCom] Saint 43,
possible E-4B working Patrick area tonight
Ken
rfinder1 at verizon.net
Fri Jan 5 20:45:20 EST 2007
Thanks for your "intriguing" post Al -- It's great to have you down in
Florida reporting these exciting "out of the ordinary" comms monitored.
Additional comments below:
----- Original Message -----
From: <AllanStern at aol.com>
To: <Milcom at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 8:04 PM
Subject: [MilCom] Saint 43, possible E-4B working Patrick area tonight
> It is Fri, 7:55pm EST (Sat, 0055z).
> It seems that an E-4B is again working in the Patrick AFB area.
> A short while ago "Saint 43 Heavy" departed Patrick and immediately I
> got
> carriers on both 311.0 AM and 356.15 WBFM. That is exactly what I had
> when
> E-4B "Biggs 25" was here at Patrick two nights ago.
COMMENT: 311.0 is a very commonly used frequency, one has to wonder why
they would tie that frequency up with a continuous carrier test, UNLESS the
fixed location that the test was conducted from only had a fixed
transceiver??? 356.15 WBFM is fairly common isn't it.
> Earlier today I heard ground comms on Patrick that were discussing "the
> Nightwatch airplane," which is a nickname for the E-4B although they no
> longer
> use the Nightwatch callsign.
COMMENT: Isn't it wonderful from a hobby monitoring standpoint & yet
disconcerting to the base's OPSEC/COMSEC programs that these slips occur on
the various aircraft maintenance nets??!!! Most of the time you could go to
sleep listening to those support comms, BUT every once and awhile!!!.....
Sort of brings back the days of "Arc Light" and those darn USSR fishing
boats near Guam scooping up all that aircraft maintenance radio nets traffic
about very current upcoming missions and warning the North Vietnamese.
> Tonight, after "Saint 43 Heavy" was up only a short time, he told the
> ATC
> on 124.8 that his exercise was almost done and he just needed to orbit
> somewhere and burn off gas before returning to Patrick. He informed that
> he would
> like to orbit for an hour and a half. Said that over-the-water orbit
> would be
> OK to get out of the ATC's hair, as long as he could stay within range of
> the ground stations he was using.
COMMENT: I think sometimes that the typical Air Traffic Control comms,
really are the key to ID'ing a lot of unknown milcom traffic one hears on
tactical/testing frequencies. What makes it difficult for milcom monitors
is amount of non-milcom traffic that is on the VHF Aero band that one has to
listen to and filter out as opposed to the Aero UHF band Sometimes if they
are at least talking on tac & atc, you can figure out the voices and match
it to the callsign, but it isn't perfect....
BUT onces again Al, you've shown us here on this list that you definitely
continue to contribute very significant loggings to the group and continue
the "intrigue" from Florida!!!
Thanks again!!!
K
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