Communications

Communications

Please note that the following are guidelines to maintain realistic communications protocols, and are not mandatory for use. If your character knows a bit about communications, however, it's probably worth using this guide for reference to avoid any glaring errors.
Contents

Shipwide Communications

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All loudspeaker announcements are audible to everyone on board the ship, close to a wireless terminal. They should be used for short announcements, orders to a general section that do not require confirmation, for example in readying alert vipers or sending out damage control teams, or to briefly call out for a particular person to contact a wireless terminal directly or report to a compartment. They should never be used to hold a conversation. Common courtesy dictates that ship-wide pages are kept to a minimum to avoid disruption and distraction from the crew's work, sleep or off duty time.

A ship-wide page should (generally) begin with either Do you hear there!, Now hear this!, or if paging for the attention of an individual, Pass the word!. The purpose of this is to attract attention to the page so that the next, important, part of the call is heard.

The meat of the text should be brief, concise and to the point. Please and thank you are not necessary. Sample text might be Fire in compartment 11B, away damage control parties!, Hull breach alarms to be tested. Disregard all hull breach alarms until further notice, or similar. To call an individual to a compartment, use the format Captain Morgan, report to the CIC. To get an individual to call a wireless in order to hold a conversation, use the format PO Dusty, 141

This text is always repeated twice, in sensible chunks (usually sentences) if the message contains several parts.

A typical page might be as follows:

Do you hear there! PO Tato, report to the gallery! PO Tato, report to the galley!

Optionally, particularly for longer pages, the call may be finished with That is all.

Basic Wireless Communications

Over and Out

A wireless may not transmit and receive at the same time. It is imperative, therefore, that every station listens before transmitting, to be certain not to transmit over the top of another station. And the end of each transmission, you should end up with one of the following procedural words (and never both together).

Over should be used to indicate that your transmission is completed and you expect a reply. If somebody contacts you and finishes with 'over', you should reply if only to acknowledge them.

Out should be used to indicate that your transmission is completed and you do not expect a reply. This also informs any other stations on the net that they are now free to contact either party without interrupting traffic.
Identifiers

Over a wireless, it should be assumed at all times that the identity of the speaker is unknown, therefore every transmission should begin with an identifier, in the format Jones, this is Smith, or more simply, Jones, Smith. If the identity of the person you are replying to is not in question, the identifier may be just, This is Jones.

Drafting Text

The text of a wireless transmission should, as with internal pages, be brief, concise and to the point. Please and thank you are not necessary, and the meaning of the text should be unambiguous without being wordy. Useful phrases to help with drafting are Confirm, Request and Advise.

Acknowledgement

To acknowledge a message and accept responsibility for passing it on to the correct authority, for example a communications operator receiving weapons fire orders for their ship, use the single word Roger in your text.

To acknowledge a message and inform them that you will act on the information yourself, for example a communications operator asked to change frequency and re-establish communications, use the single word Wilco, short for 'will comply' in your text. Roger and Wilco should never be used together. If in doubt, 'Roger' usually applies to most cases.

Repetitions

On occasion it may be necessary to ask for a repetition of a signal or part of a signal, or in difficult conditions or when the information is vital to be received accurately and immediately, it may be prudent to repeat all or part of your message text. Note that the 'over' or 'out' is only ever said once.

To request a repetition, use the phrase say again and never 'repeat'. If only a portion of the message needs to be said again, the portion may be identified with 'word after', 'word before', 'all after', 'all before' or 'from <word> to <word>', for example, Spinner, this is Ice, say again, over or Spinner, this is Ice, say again word after rescue, over

To give a repetition, use the phrase I say again to indicate that this is repetition by the operator, not repetition in the message. If an identifying portion is used, say I say again word after <word> <text> etc., for example, Ice, this is Spinner, word after rescue, raptor, over.

Example

A typical conversation might be as follows:

Spinner: Ice, this is Spinner, request search and rescue raptor launch to recover our pilots, over.
Ice: This is Ice, raptor launched, over.
Spinner: This is Spinner, roger, out.

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