Another mythical call - ' I'm not that bored'
However, reality of a sort intervenes and during Gulf War 1, we had to contact all merchant ships we flew past on Ch16 and ascertain their cargo, port of departure and port of destination. On flying past a ship, we would read the ship's name from the information painted on the hull, pass it to the tac nav who would initiate the call. In boredom, again drawing on an old and tired RT story, one LPG carrier's name was given as the letters painted on the bridge as - 'The Nosmo King'. Once the overworked tac Nav tried calling this callsign on Ch16, it opened the flood gates for the invention of spurious names such as 'Nopar King' and 'Esso Ottineer' along with the likes of 'Miar Sole'. To hear a senior nav call that his ar****le was on Ch 16 amused us during hours of tedium checking up to 136 contacts in a 4hr sortie. This led to competition between the tac nav and observers - be they flight deck or beam lookouts, to invent the most imaginable names and a pint waiting on detection or not. Simple things eh?