On the Technical Side

Crazy Lingo!

It all starts with MARS! Have you ever told one of your non-ham friends you were a members of MARS to get a strange look in return? Then you realize that this person is not sure what you mean and you see them looking at your back trying to find the little antennas rising out of your head. You quickly regroup and explain that stands for the Military Affiliate Radio System. “Oh’” they think to themselves, “that explains the letters on your hat and all the antennas on your car!“ Crazy Lingo!

For those of us in the business it starts with the alphabet soup call sign we received. Quickly we learn that the best way to look at it and say it is phonetically. Now we are off to the races! Then comes all the call signs of the inmates and the billet call signs and you begin to wonder if you ever did learn your ABC’s way back in school. So that’s why Mrs. Perkins drove that stuff into my head back in the first grade. Or for some of us, that’s why Sister Theresa cracked our knuckles with the12 inch wooden ruler! They knew they had a future MARS operator in their grasp!

Somehow we prevail and we catch onto the call signs but then comes all those abbreviations, There’s the JOC, the SOC, the EOC, an EEI, a DTG, the NCS, the SMD, the ASMD, the ZC, the AZC, need I go on? I haven’t even begun to discuss the abbreviations you will see in the body of a message! If you’ve hung on this far and given up on trying to figure out all this crazy lingo then you are a MARS Operator! It will get better, just hang in there, help is on the way.

In all professions you will encounter a lingo that is specific to that field. Some of the abbreviations you will just have to accept and you’ll wonder why everybody doesn’t know them. This is normal, what you have to guard against is using these abbreviations in everyday speech or in message traffic (be it a MARS Exercise or an Actual Incident) where the person receiving the information may not be in the loop so to speak.

In the case of the JOC, the SOC, the EOC, etc., it is helpful to know that the “OC” stands for Operation Center. Then when you learn that the “J” in “JOC” stands for Joint, the “S” in “SOC stands for State, and the “E” in “EOC” stands for Emergency it all begins to come clear. See, now wasn‘t that easy?

Abbreviations like these have been around since the first soldier mounted the first horse. Sometimes they are used to name a specific function like we have already seen, sometimes they are informational like DTG, or Date/Time/Group, or they can even be a command to perform a specific function. Funny story: When I was in the Air Force I worked in a manpower shop, we were assigned to the Electronic Security Command commonly referred to as ESC. Of course we had all spent time in other commands like TAC (Tactical Air Command) or SAC (Strategic Air Command) and were quite familiar with a host of abbreviations each specific to the places we were stationed and the work we performed. One day a visitor to our office asked our supervisor, a 30 year plus Senior NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer) how many commands there were when he entered the service. Jimmy didn’t get a chance to answer because the rest of us answered for him. TWO! Mount and Dismount! You have to keep the subject in perspective!

Abbreviations like we see in the headers of our message traffic make sense to us and are always going to be around. What isn’t always the most clear is when we encounter an abbreviation in the body of a message. For instance I may put the abbreviation SAPD in a message as my source for the information I am sending. Now I live in San Antonio and it is understood that SAPD in this context would stand for San Antonio Police Department. But if you were from MARS (pun intended) which could be defined as the area in West Texas you might think SAPD stood for the San Angelo Police Department. What I am saying is that the recipient of your message other than the MARS operator on the other end may not be familiar with such an abbreviation. When in doubt about the recipient understanding the abbreviation the best plan of attack is to spell it out. It may add verbiage to the spoken traffic but it will create far less confusion and save time on both ends having to track down the meaning of the abbreviation.

Our clients can be the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), firefighters, law enforcement personnel, Red Cross workers etc. We are here to serve them. We do not have to know every detail of their job but should be aware of their set of circumstances and not add any unnecessary difficulty to their tasks by speaking in mono syllabic abbreviations that wouldn’t be understood.

Can you imagine a client reading a message where it goes something like this: “The NCS should request that all stations send an AAR to the SMD by COB on the fifth day after COE.” Say what?

To put it simply it means the Net Control Station should request that all stations send an After Action Report to the State MARS Director by the Close of Business on the fifth day after Completion of the Exercise! CRAZY Lingo!

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