The Magazine of the Royal Corps of Signals UNITED KINGDOM SPECIAL FORCES
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THE wire October 2013 www.royalsignals.mod.uk The Magazine of The Royal Corps of Signals UNITED KINGDOM SPECIAL FORCES 18 (uksf) signal regiment BY ST R E E IL N U G G TH special forces Communicator AN D The Special Forces Communicator Course is open to all male volunteers from any part of the Regular Armed Forces (RN, RM, Army and RAF) as well as TA Reservist candidates. Interested? Call: 94475 2537 / 0800 169 9864 Email: [email protected] UNITED KINGDOM SPECIAL FORCES AUGUST 2013 Vol. 67 No: 5 The Magazine of the Royal Corps of Signals Established in 1920 18 (uksf) signal regiment BY ST R E Find us on E IL N U G G TH special forces Communicator AN D The Wire Published bi-monthly Annual subscription £12.00 plus postage Editor: Mr Keith Pritchard Editor Deputy Editor: Ms J Burke Mr Keith Pritchard Tel: 01258 482817 All correspondence and material for publication in The Wire should be addressed to: The Wire, RHQ Royal Signals, Blandford Camp, Blandford Forum, Dorset, DT11 8RH Email: [email protected] Contributors Deadline for The Wire : 15th February for publication in the April. 15th April for publication in the June. 15th June for publication in the August. 15th August for publication in the October. 15th October for publication in the December. Accounts / Subscriptions 10th December for publication in the February. Mrs Jess Lawson To see The Wire on line or to refer to Guidelines for Contributors, go to: Tel: 01258 482087 http://www.army.mod.uk/signals/25070.aspx Subscribers All enquiries regarding subscriptions and changes of address of The Wire should be made to: 01258 482087 or 94371 2087 (mil) or [email protected]. Remittances should be made payable to Royal Signals Benevolent Fund CONTENTS Page RESPONSIBILITIES REGARDING SECURITY OF SUBMISSIONS There has been a recent increase in the number of security breaches as a result of articles containing protectively marked information News from Operations 2 being published in ‘In-House Publications’. You will appreciate that this could affect the security of operations and may inadvertently News from Blandford 5 affect personnel security by facilitating the easy identification and subsequent targeting of soldiers and, potentially, their families. News from Training 6 To ensure further breaches are prevented, contributors are reminded of their responsibilities for ensuring that any articles submitted for News from Formations 14 publication are checked in accordance with the Defence In-House News from Regiments 16 Publications Policy and Process: a. Sources of material. All articles have been cleared News from Squadrons 77 by the relevant internal authority before submission. b. Protective Markings. All submissions for The Wire Other Units 95 must be kept. Sport c. Use of Imagery. Images of identifiable individuals 98 are classed as personal data and must comply with the Data Protection Act 1998. Photography or imagery always Royal Signals Association 104 requires permission (Reference B refers). Reference C provides further guidance on legislative and MOD requirements, this includes Image Security. Reference D Last Post 110 defines the record management procedures for video, film Obituaries 110 and photographic images. References: A. 2010DIN05-020 (Defence In-House Publications Policy and Process). B. 2012DIN05-006 (Consent Form for Defence Imagery). C. JSP 440 (Defence Manual of Security) Chap 5, Part 8, Section 5. D. JSP 441 (Defence Records Management Policy and Procedures). E. ABN 86/13 (Army Social Media Governance and Registration). FRONT COVER WO2 (FofS (IS)) Owen Trimble and Sig BACK COVER The Special Forces Communicator Course is open to all male volunteers from any part of the Cpl Usher from 11 (RSS) Sig Regt Danny Pain taking part in the RN/RM Field diving with a friend in South Africa Regular Armed Forces (RN, RM, Army and RAF) as well as TA Reservist candidates. Gun competition Authors alone are responsible for the content of their articles. The opinions expressed in the articles of this publication are those of the individual Interested? Call: 94475 2537 / 0800 169 9864 authors and do not necessarily reflect the policy and views, official or otherwise, of the Royal Corps of Signals or the Ministry of Defence. All articles and submissions are published at the discretion of the Editor. This publication may contain official information. It should be treated with discretion by the recipient. Email: [email protected] 1 Printed by Holbrook Printers Ltd, Norway Road, Hilsea, Portsmouth © Crown Copyright NEWS FROM OPERATIONS 3rd (UNITED KINGDOM) DIVISION HEADQUARTERS AND SIGNAL REGIMENT HELMAND ICS SIGNAL SQUADRON (202 SIGNAL SQUADRON) delivered first class support on behalf of an ever busy Network Section. We’re often asked to lend a hand to other OC Maj Dixon sections, be it cable pulling with the Telemechs or power SSM WO2 (SSM) Brown issues with the EDs. No two days are the same in HICSSS Network Section! ENGINEERING TROOP Mission Secret Section – by Sig ‘Michael Jordan’ Rodger Network Section – by LCpl ‘Welshy’ Hopkins So another month has passed out here in the desert. The MS Not wishing to blow our own trumpet but it is as Carlsberg team have been working day and night to keep would say ‘Probably the busiest and diverse section in HICSSS’ communications afloat in the town of Bastion and beyond. A few of the guys have been coming into work with shocking One of the many responsibilities of the section is providing haircuts. What do you expect when you go and see Edward support for Video Teleconferencing (VTC), or as it is known in Scissorhands on Bastion 2 and don’t pay a penny! The barber the civilian sector, Visual Collaboration. Currently we support here is also the tailor who will try and turn your floppy hat on average 8 conferences per day with the vast amount going into a pair of PCS shorts, also at no charge. He doesn’t even smoothly. That saying, when the IP conference decides to offer an extended warranty. drop and all the staff officers get a little edgy it’s down to us to reconnect the call via ISDN as quickly as possible, ensuring The amount of faults in the last month have been coming in that no vital information gets missed. These VCTs are used as thick and fast due to the move of TFH back to Bastion and the a means in which critical information and updates get passed vast amount of officers that can’t get their head around the from location to location across the globe, therefore as you new Op JANA password criteria! Everyday is something could imagine it is paramount that we ensure the conferences different out here, some lucky operators have been deploying run smoothly. to FOBs and PBs with a deployable Overtask system, providing MS services and some extremely lucky people have been helping out the CDT team last month. Whilst working out here we’ve had some help from the much loved “Royal Air Force”. The Tactical Communications Wing (TCW) crew have been working alongside us for the last couple of months and now that their ultra-long tour of four months is drawing to an end next month, their trips to the Green Bean Coffee Shop have rapidly increased on a daily basis. Last week they took part in the Bastion half marathon which they all managed to finish, just. On camp there has been a few restrictions emplaced this month due to a fuel shortage. No aircon on during the day in the tents, so if you were on night shift you had to suffer by sweating buckets in your own pit. Only 2 showers a day at 3 minutes each, shocking I know. Also there was a shortage of Cpl Kay hard at work Our main responsibility however is the maintenance of the Promina network within Bastion. With roughly 1500 phones dotted around such a vast camp our engineers are always scattered across Bastion fixing faults and maintaining equipment. Working closely with 15 Signal Regiment and in particular 600 Troop, we constantly monitor the network to ensure any problems or faults are dealt with swiftly and efficiently. All our engineers are responsible for at least one Network Equipment Room which houses the Promina equipment for all the phones in the local vicinity, as well as Housekeeper/Overtask/JOCS/DII C(S)D servers and VSAT. It’s not uncommon for extra jobs to come our way. LCpl ‘Justin’ Creber experienced this first hand when asked to build and configure a TNG from scratch having never touched the kit before. He more than exceeded expectations and SFP on TV Hill 2 THE WIRE, OCTOBER 2013 desserts in the scoff house. This upset many of the HICSSS world for 2 weeks. Although at this rate the way the Queens team due to the lack of the famous chocolate fudge cake finest Royal Air Force are going about their business lately, 14 which is also available in the HUB back home on camp. days will more than likely look like 3 days. Now that Ramadan has started there has been a total ban on CLOSE SUPPORT TROOP sunbathing throughout Bastion. As you can imagine this has caused riots and uproar with many people going on R&R in Request for Change Section – by Lt Andrew Hutchings the next couple of weeks, they can’t even “panic-tan”. As we move into our third month of RFCs everything is So until next time, when we bring you more on goings in the starting to come together nicely. It is sometimes hard work in world of HICSSS. the sense that the jobs are always coming in so there are occasions when just as the job count starts getting low, 10 Power Section – by LCpl Tommy Byford more RFCs will come in over night and we will have to work a few long days to get them back down again.