Signalman 1 & C - Historic Naval Ships Association

portion, OHWZ DE NQHS constitutes the entire callelement.The call sign of the station called is OHWZ. Forillustrative purposes, OHWZ is assumed to be the callsign for Commander Amphibious Squadron Three.Call signs in Navy messages reduce the length oftransmission. Each ship, station, and command of theNavy (and of the other services) has one or more callsigns, that are listed in various communicationpublications. Call signs are discussed in mote detaillater in this chapter.The prosign DE in the message stands for "from."It is used only in the call. Its complete meaning is"This transmission is from the station whosedesignation follows." It indicates the station actuallytransmitting the message or signal and only indicatesthe originator when the call is serving as the address.In the example, the calling station is NQHS, theinternational call sign of USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19).International call signs for U.S. Navy and U.S. CoastGuard ships begin with the letter N.In figure 3-2, transmission instructions consist ofprosign T, meaning “Station called transmit thismessage to all addressees appearing in the addresscomponent.” OHWZ, therefore, is responsible fordelivering the message to XGHL. If the T wereimmediately followed by call signs or addressdesignations, it would assume the meaning of “‘Stationcalled transmit this message to the addressees whoseaddress designations follow.” Similarly, if the T werepreceded and followed by call signs, it would mean‘Station preceding T transmit this message to thoseaddressees whose address designations follow T.”Other prosigns that may appear in transmissioninstructions are G (“Repeat back”), F (“Do notanswer”), and L (“Relay”). Prosign G is used by atransmitting station to ensure that the receiving stationhas received the message as transmitted, particularlyif the message is of great importance or of a typedifficult to send or receive. If G appears alone in thetransmission instructions, all stations called repeatback the message; if G is preceded by call signs, itmeans that stations whose call signs precede G repeatback the message. Prosign F means “Do not answer.”It is used in a method of visual signaling that will bediscussed in chapter 4. Prosign L is the relay sign. Itsmeaning is similar to T, but is not as specific. Intransmission instructions, L means “Relay to thoseaddressees for whom you are responsible.” Its use alsorequires that the station called report to you that themessage has been relayed. The elements of theprocedure component are assigned bycommunications personnel to effectively deliver themessage or signal. The elements of the preamble,address, and prefix component, which follow, arereleased by the originator and are not altered bycommunications personnel.PreambleThe preamble of a plaindress message shows itsrelative importance; contains the date-time group, bywhich most messages are identified; and providesinformation relating to the message. The preamble infigure 3-2 is P 061933Z MAR 95. P is a precedenceprosign, and the remainder is the date-time group,including month and year, of transmission.The precedence assigned by an originator reflectsa judgment as to the speed required to deliver themessage to the addressee. By misusing the precedencesystem, you defeat its purpose, which is to assure rapidhandling of message traffic over available facilitieswith a minimum of backlog and delay resulting fromcompeting messages. The importance of a messagedoes not necessarily imply urgency. Figure 3-4 showsthe precedence categories, their speed-of-serviceobjectives, and examples of their assignments.Messages having both action and informationaddressees may be assigned a single or dualprecedence. If a single precedence is assigned to amultiple-address message, the precedence indicatesthe relative importance to all addressees. If assignedtwo precedences, one for action addressees and alower precedence for information addressees, themessage is of greater importance to the actionaddressees.If the message in figure 3-2 were assigned dualprecedence, the preamble would read P R 061933ZMAR 95. This would show that the message should betreated as a priority message for delivery to OHWZand as a routine message when delivered to XGHL.Dual-precedence messages, in visual signaling,normally are handled as single-precedence messagesbecause of the proximity of ships and signalingstations. If, however, the action addressee of adual-precedence (for example, P R) message were incompany but one or more information addressees werenot, relay would be required. In that instance, themessage would be sent immediately to the actionaddressee, but might be transmitted to a differentstation for relay to the information addressees, using3-5