V-force emergency communications?
I’ve been a licensed radio amateur for a long time. Back in the early 1980s when I was involved with the development of linear amplifiers and their power supplies, I repaired one for a gentleman who had been (or said he had been) a Vulcan AEO. He wouldn’t give his callsign “…for security reasons”.
In passing he said that if they lost all other communications, the V-force were authorised to try contacting radio amateurs using CW (Morse) in our 7MHz band. I made polite noises but rather doubted this tale. In fact I rather thought he was what nowadays we’d call a Walt. For a variety of reasons involving the terms of the amateur licence and the fact that most amateurs called by someone with an unusual callsign simply wouldn’t answer, it seemed highly unlikely.
I’d more or less forgotten this little story but hearing an oddball callsign the other day on 7MHz brought it back to mind. But was there anything in it? Any ex-V-force AEOs out there who’d know?