AlienFTM

Not to be confused with Chav Cav, as the cavalry call the RTR (qv the reverse, Donkey Wallopers).

Because we were recce and in CVR(T), we had an open map of where to exercise (within reason: I do remember about 1980 we became the first military unit to enter the Harz Mountains National Park since the end of the war and evidently not all the locals knew we were allowed because I got gesticulated at a lot in the commander's seat of my Ferret that fortnight). Many was the time we would be sat manning the Battle Group and Divisional Command Nets and I'd find myself passing up the chain a Noduff * message that another Merc had ploughed into the back of a column, even though there were lights on, but the Merc driver didn't believe the lights could be warning of anything bigger than him, and besides, in the dark there were only lights: the cam did its job of camouflaging the armoured vehicles. Another five wasted lives (why did Mercs always travel five-up?) _____ * Noduff. Back in the day, before my time, the most that electronic counter measures (see wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_countermeasures) might comprise was to direction-find (DF) a transmitting station, triangulate it and attack it. When something real happened on exercise that required urgent action (see above), a message was prefixed No DF (pronounced Noduff, like Huff-duff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_frequency_direction_finding) so that ECM stations did not use non-exercise messages to gain an exercise advantage. Even though ECM had moved on a long way from simply DFing the enemy, the message prefix Noduff remained and had absolute priority on the net. _____ I did a search for Noduff in wiki and got but a single hit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualty_evacuation . At the bottom it gives an example of a Noduff message. It's Australian and the Voice procedure is slightly different. The caller is sending a standard report, a request for Casualty Evacuation using a standard message format: Serial Alpha: callsign reporting the CasEvac Serial Bravo: Grid Ref of the casualty and the Pickup point Serial Charlie: ? Serial Delta: Number of casualties? Serial Echo: Nature of injury Serial Foxtrot: Priority on a scale known to caller and recipient Serial Golf: special requirements Serial Hotel: ? Serial India: Action taken to avoid further problems Serial Juliet: ? Serial Kilo: ?

If you read Dracula by Bram Stoker (the original, not anything derived from films or sequels) ISTR there is some quite detailed stuff about arm to arm blood transfusions when they were in Scarborough (well-known vampire country!) and some young woman kept having her blood drained. I was surprised that blood transfusion went back so far and IIRC there was nothing to suggest that Stoker knew anything about blood groups

Your sums (and knowledge) look better than mine and I bow to your superior knowledge. ;o)

And frequency changes implemented by changing a crystal IIRC. Edit having looked at the pic: That's the baby: I now remember the tape antenna with the loop.

Closed = returned to the MOD having been made available to the Bundeswehr in 1962 in order to free up Hohne Ranges for the exclusive use of BAOR. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlemartin_Training_Area At Hohne Ranges in 1980 I remember seeing an M60A1 which had suffered a split track and consequently turned right off the range road and ploughed into a rather stout tree. I was told that the M60 actually managed to crack its glacis plate. Wouldn't fill me with confidence that I'd survive a hit from a T62 if I were an M60 crewman. Point here is that although we supposedly swapped Castlemartin for sole rights to Hohne, we were accommodating the US Army.

Every day, but only because it is only from the front page (that I have found) that I can access "New replies to your post". Once I have checked those, I just click New Posts, scan a forum at a time, mark each forum read when I have visited all the threads that interest me, then click on New Posts again until there are no new posts (or few enough to scan the titles by eye and not bother). I never actually READ the front page unless something pops up that excites.

Anything over 8' puts it in the the military HF range, 1.5 - 30MHz at 1/4 wavelength. Hence eight feet of rod maximum for a C42, but up to 12 feet for a C13. (It is unrealistic to carry more than 12' of rod in an antenna base as it is unworkable: the antenna is tuned to the length by the ATU. However, when using a mast (as an antenna if the wavelength is good or to support a dipole) as the frequency tends to zero, the antenna length tends to infinity: at really low HF frequencies, I have run out seriously long antennas. I got myself on permanent nights in the MRG radio truck because I didn't trust them to change the frequencies and the codes correctly at midnight. (If you want it done properly, do it yourself. Eventually I had to let them learn as I was posted out, but there was to be no loss of comms on MY shift.) Many was the night I'd be dragged from my scratcher about 0030 with, "We've lost comms." The downside of the night stag on the Logistic Guard Net (where the Main REME Group hung out) was that traffic tended to zero apart from the odd daily return. I used to spend the early hours of the stag calculating the antenna length for the next day's frequency so that at 2359 hours (there wasn't a midnight in the Armed Forces until July 1982 when a DCI defined it. Prior to that, the day finished at 2359 and the next day started at 0001: saved confusion at midnight) I'd retune the UK/VRC321, run outside, drop the mast, adjust the antenna length, erect the mast, run back inside and call Div for a radio check. I was usually left waiting (Logistic Guard Net was not their highest priority). We did one day get a visit from GOC 1 Armd Div. He was next door in the Orderly Room having a quiet chat while next door I was bollicking a REEM because the bank was yet again complaining that he was overdrawn. The door between Orderly Room and Pay Office opened and the GOC's head popped round. "I know that voice." "I beg your pardon sir?" "You're the man who's always on the Logistic Guard Net bollicking my operators for being slack and idle." "Sorry sir." "Don't be. None of my people ever bother to keep them in line. Keep up the good work." Anyway where was I? Oh yes, permanent night stags. I quickly realised that calculating the antenna length from first principles every night was a waste of time, so one night I sat and plotted a graph of HF Frequency against 1/4 wavelength. Not rocket science, but long-winded. I Fabloned the graph to the inside wall of the truck next to where the lead passed out between set and mast. Trouble was it meant that in future there was even less to do before the frequency change and I was sat even longer waiting for Div to turn up on the new frequency. So I acquired spare sets of blank code boards (it was Batco and Slidex at that time) and filled the spares in readiness for the frequency change. Then at midnight I wiped yesterday's code boards. Simple.

T54/55, in common with most rear-engined tanks, had the drive sprocket at the rear (and hence the idler at the front). I understand that the prominent gap between roadwheels 1 and 2 was so that in the event of a mine strike (usually by roadwheel 1, obviously), it would be possible to take the remaining track, route it around roadwheel 2, bypassing the remnants of roadwheel 1 and the idler and get out of the way of the advance in, if you like, emergency mode. Never saw it done and obviously not seen as enough of a brilliant idea to be used on all tanks. Maybe T54/55 were the only tanks low tech enough to try it on.

Solder the ends together? It's what I used to do when I got fed up of users bringing their kit back and whingeing that the connectors kept disconnecting.

Pull up a sandbag. Not a UK/PRC344, but its immediate Larkspur predecessor (whose designation escapes me. As we have heard often enough by now, I attended the last Larkspur-based RAC Control Signaller AFV Class 1 upgrade course at Bovington in the summer of 1978 (as Clansman was about to roll out). One of the instructors was a sergeant in the Royal Hussars (now the King's Royal Hussars following their merger with 14th/20th The King's Hussars in 1992 and not to be confused with my own regiment, 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars who merged with 13th/18th Royal Hussars (Queen Mary's Own) to become The Light Dragoons in the same year.) He was a young sergeant and very keen, probably newly qualified as in instructor. He rarely wasted time with preamble at the start of of a lesson, but one morning he did ... There had been a Signals Instructor course running in the same building. The Signals Wing at Bovington did all such courses above the basic recruit radio course which didn't itself even warrant a change of pay grade but was a pre-requisite to Crewman Gunner B3 and Crewman Driver B3. Bovington being the Royal Armoured Corps Centre, the Signals Wing had a veritable antenna farm on the roof and in theory it was possible to communicate with RAC regiments around the world. Anyway ... a trainee instructor was tasked to give a lesson on the Larkspur predecessor to the UK/PRC344 (whose designation I cannot remember, but we did have one in our Regimental Signals store back in Paderborn and John McG and I had spent a happy morning one morning working out exactly what this piece of kit was for). He went through the lesson. He came to the BEACON setting and started to explain. "The Forward Air Controller sets the radio to BEACON and it will broadcast a signal which will guide an attack aircraft to it and the attack aircraft will use the location of the beacon as Initial Point for a run at a target designated by the FAC." He switched the set to BEACON and carried on with the lecture. Now, this particular man had a friend in the Fleet Air Arm (or whatever it was called that day) at Yeovilton, flying Phantoms. Unbeknownst to the course - or the instructors - previous night he had phoned his mukker in Yeovilton, explained about his lecture and "Can you arrange a training flight during the morning and launch an attack via my beacon [details followed]?" So trainee continues with his lecture and five minutes later a Phantom passes over the Signals Wing at zero feet. He broke off and pointed out, "...and that's how the BEACON works." Then came the crash as the antenna farm came down in the back-draught from the low-flying Phantom.

If you want to see the Jordanian upgrade, you might consider asking The Light Dragoons ( http://www.lightdragoons.org.uk/regiment_today/index.php ) very nicely if they might allow you to look at their "gate guardian" (not really a gate guardian, cos it's inside Robertson Barracks, Swanton Morley) presented by their Colonel in Chief, King Abdullah. I cannot promise you the LD Ferret features the Jordanian upgrade - I didn't know they'd done one until five minutes ago. And AFAIK my 360 degree photo set of said Ferret turned up nothing that screamed, "I don't remember that on a Mark 2 Ferret" at me. But King Abdullah has only been Colonel in Chief since HRH The Princess Diana died, so I figure the Ferret he presented must have been quite late.

I think for Bovvy for the foreseeable future, the engine will be a show stopper. Last time I looked they were having enough trouble sourcing one working Maybach 230 for the Tiger 1 (blown before this year's season, hence the static display at Tankfest), without then having to source another for the Tiger 2. IMO of course. I'd give Bovvy money myself ... oh hang on, I already do, every month, hence my listing under Light Dragoons (15/19H and 13/18H) on the wall on the way in. ;o)

You didn't think before typing, did you? CVR(T)s are left hand drive so that the driver is on the correct side IN BAOR!

Ready for Unternehmung Seeloewe 2 no doubt, just as most of our armour by then was LHD ready to march on Berlin.

Every Chieftain where we saw both side plate callsign and turret rear callsign, they were different. One even appeared to change squadron (21D to 33A maybe? It's been a weekend since I watched it). Why our CVR(T)s only ever had one removable callsign plate on the back of the turret: where the commander goes, his callsign goes with him.

You want to read A Tracked Armoured Car. I want to finish writing it.

I have now watched the two Crusader 80 / Spearpoint films. It's pity that: Herr Reinecke was more interested in the Orange Forces (2 US Armored Division "Hell on Wheels") than the point of the exercise, 1 (Br) Corps, who only got any airtime toward the end of part 1. He only found tanks and a handful of APCs to watch. Recce is even more fun than you saw, swanning about in CVR(T)s in traditional cavalry stylee all year, not bound by the limits of the 443 training areas. Some points. This film is the first time I ever saw M60A2s (with 155mm dual purpose gun/missile launchers firing Shillelagh ATGMs) on the move. Notice how every unit had a single British vehicle at the back? That was an umpire, provided by 3 Armd Div, which deployed in our entirety to umpire the exercise. Even the attack helicopters had a Lynx tagged on at the back. I'll be following the links to other exercises and see if I can see me in any of them.

Put it this way. I spent 1977 - 1982 in BAOR in a recce regt. On the Army Rumour Service some time ago, the consensus was reached that the best time to be in the Royal Armoured Corps was 1975 - 1982, and you had to be in BAOR, because that's where the RAC was. So I got out on a high. I transferred to RAPC, attached REME and expected the quiet life (because that's what the RAPC got attached to a cavalry regiment) but my history meant that I spent 82 - 85 continuing to play the game. Would I change a minute of it? No chance.

I really didn't expect it to be a Vickers Mark VI Light Tank, per the destruction of 15/19H on the Escaut in May 1940. Might have been interested at a purely historical level.

Whether to fit a "new" engine is about compromise. The Bovington Tiger put a con rod through the last available Maybach 210 first time it started up after renovation and it took years to find a Maybach 230 (the best available alternative) and heavily mod the early model Tiger 1 so that it could run the engine out of a late model Tiger 1 (ISTR the actual lump in question came out of a Tiger 2). And that's with Bovvy's connections. I am sure that throughout its life span, every model of tank (note: as opposed to every individual tank) must have had different model engines fitted, so there must be at least a little strain on people like you people who do this sort of thing on modest resources etc. So once you get over the hang-up of, "Ah but did this individual chassis ever actually have that exact model of engine / gearbox / minor assy / engine deck screws etc?" surely the pain is eased. Certainly as an outsider, I'd rather see a Scorpion running on a diesel engine rather than parked up on bricks for want of a J60.

As somebody pointed out, the smaller Fox turret required an adapter to make it fit the Scorpion hull: therefore the Scorpion turret would be too big for a Fox hull. Somebody else pointed out ammo space. There was only room for 42 times 76mm rounds in a Scorpion. You'd get nothing meaningful stored in a Fox. And I don't see a Fox standing up too well (literally) to having the 76 fired over the side, so you might as well weld (or whatever you do to aluminium alloy armour) the turret to the hull. Make a great recce vehicle ... NOT!

If, as Schliesser92 suggests, this was Spearpoint 76 (the first time Task Forces rolled out into the field instead of Brigades), I was in UNFICYP at the time. I cannot say I have ever heard of this incident, but there were so many over the years ...

Pull up a sandbag. As a youngster I was vaguely aware that my aunt had served during the war. In fact I heard the story often enough (whenever a particular film came on) but it simply never registered. I joined up, did seven years in armd recce, then got fed up and took the advice of my former Paymaster to transfer into the Pay Corps (and what a great career move it turned out to be). Then a decade ago I came into possession of a suitcase full of my long-dead mother's memorabilia. Including pictures of her sister Daisy in uniform. Then I remembered all the stories. Daisy was attached RAPC and posted to RPO Leicester under the command of Lt Col M. E. Clifton-James, Monty's double. What a coincidence that 40 years after my aunt, I transferred to RAPC and spent much of my seven years dealing with RPO Leicester, yet despite the stories I had been told as a child, my reasons were entirely personal and unrelated. It's a small world. Checking C-J's wiki entry ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._E._Clifton_James ), I found a lovely line:

This reminds me of an exercise we did in 1981 around the village of Forst (the subject has cropped up a few times, here's another "Pull up a sandbag" moment). We, the close recce squadrons had been swanning round the temporary 443 area for the first week, then at the start of the second week, we were to form up on the FUP, cross the Start Line at first light and advance to contact. Unfortunately, despite being high summer, the fog was as thick as I have ever seen fog. We crept down our road, Sammy Brown the driver struggling to see the road in front of his Scorpion's final drives. The fog just got thicker and thicker as we dropped down into the valley where the village nestled. Eventually he pulled up on the offside - left-hand - verge (it was a narrow B-road and at this early hour it matter a toss) while 2Lt H consulted the map, cos even though H was a bliddy good subaltern for someone straight off his troop leader's course, conditions were not conducive to good map reading. We (the whole squadron) were being ridiculously slowed down and were running incredibly behind schedule. I patted H on the shoulder and shouted above the engine noise, "Is it me, or is the engine running LOUD? And why is the ground shaking?" I saw his eyes widen as they looked past my shoulder. I turned to follow and inches from my face passed the mudguards and bazooka plates of a Chieftain which disappeared back into the pea soup as quickly as it had appeared. (I only ever saw a glimpse of mudguard and a hint of loader's head.) Chieftains never ever got allowed off the leash except on exercise areas, whereas we the recce troops could exercise our Scorpions anywhere. Because the Chieftains had been allowed out (that's why the area was designated a temporary 443), they were rather narked at having to bimble up the road behind the recce screen and they wanted to unleash the beasts. Eventually they just lost patience and floored it. Let's face it, 60 tons of steel at 30mph carries a lot more kinetic energy than 8 tons of CVR(T) at 10mph and they didn't care a toss what got in their way. Lucky we'd pulled off onto the verge I reckon, seeing the mood the chav tankies were in.