{"id":25,"date":"2015-05-02T04:24:05","date_gmt":"2015-05-02T04:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reasignals.net\/wordpress\/?p=25"},"modified":"2016-02-22T14:50:11","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T14:50:11","slug":"about-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reasignals.net\/wordpress\/about-us\/","title":{"rendered":"About Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

About Us<\/strong><\/p>\n

REARB MEMBERSHIP<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"20150811_090233-1\"People\u00a0join the Royal Engineers Association Radio Branch for various reasons. \u00a0The majority\u00a0are serving or ex professional radio operators, combat signallers, wireless operators, and today CIS Operators. \u00a0Mostly\u00a0they\u00a0serve in\u00a0the Army\u00a0command and control system (C2) as Sappers\u00a0– handling communications between the commanders and RE troops in the field. \u00a0For them “home” is considered to be the RE Command Support Branch (CSB)\u00a0– a\u00a0training centre where\u00a0the Command,\u00a0Control,\u00a0Communications and Information\u00a0Systems (C3IS)\u00a0are practised and developed.<\/p>\n

(There is a long history of signalling in the corps dating back before the start of the corps of Royal Signals during WW1.)<\/p>\n

According to OFCOM, the UK Radio Communications Agency, Amateur Radio is often practised by professionals in the radio and electronics field as a method of self training and experimentation. \u00a0The RE have traditionally used amateur radio as a method of training in basic electronics, batteries and charging and antenna and transmission theory. \u00a0To others amateur radio is a hobby. \u00a0Forty percent of REARB members are licensed amateurs. \u00a0Of these some are field engineers or tradesmen – typical sappers who have taken\u00a0up radio as a hobby and enjoy being able to develop the skills and communicate worldwide with radio (or computers) in many ways.<\/p>\n

The branch is open to all people with an interest in radio communications and electronics who have the Royal Engineers cap badge in common. \u00a0Our branch badge is a version of the RE Badge superimposed upon the crossed flags of the British Infantry Signaller.<\/p>\n

Being a branch of the Royal Engineers dedicated to Radio Operators, Signallers and IT People has its perks. Being a national branch of the association, face to face meetings are expensive and there is no local branch meeting space. Some members live abroad.<\/p>\n

However we meet\u00a0mostly\u00a0On air i.e. by radio.
\n\"nteregs\"This meeting takes place\u00a0every week on Saturdays. On air is a radio term \u00a0– it means over the airwaves. \u00a0We just get on the radio and talk to each other by forming up a \u201cnet\u201d (or network). This radio network is theoretically world-wide but this usually means we can talk to each other wherever we are and throughout the UK. \u00a0We use the frequencies here<\/a>\u00a0at the times listed (although this may vary). (One amateur frequency band is shared with the military and military and amateur operators can communicate with each other).<\/p>\n

Listen In<\/strong><\/p>\n

Five or six of our members are regulars and in 2015 a net was open on Saturday morning for 52 weeks of the year. \u00a0Anyone with a shortwave receiver can listen in. (It will need to have a mode called single sideband (SSB) as opposed to AM or FM). You can find one here on the web at Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker.<\/a>\u00a0 If you listen, you may hear other radio amateurs joining this radio net. \u00a0It attracts listeners and invites other amateur callers to join in.<\/p>\n

Identification<\/strong>
\nMembers have \u201ccall signs\u201d to identify us and our locations. (A call sign consist of a short series of letters and numbers to indicate the country of origin, the type of licence and the date it was issued or its purpose like this:<\/p>\n

G or Golf = England
\n3 = Full Licence
\nR or Romeo
\nE or Echo<\/p>\n

See here for more info<\/a>\u00a0about callsigns in the UK<\/p>\n

Royal Engineer Amateur Radio Callsigns<\/strong><\/p>\n

The corps has its own unique call signs to identify it on amateur radio. G3RE or Golf Three Royal Engineers is used by the veterans. G3XRE is the call sign of the Command Support Branch of the\u00a0Royal Engineers. \u00a0GB0REM belongs to the Corps Museum in Gillingham, Kent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Publicity and Commemoratives<\/strong>
\nWe send a post card to people who make contact with us – they need to send us a report on what they hear to earn it. \u00a0This is to confirm and to commemorate the contact and they are\u00a0collectable. Here are some of the cards we have sent out.<\/a>\u00a0 All contacts are logged.<\/p>\n

Occasionally we set up Royal Engineer related special event stations. These use special call signs to identify us as Royal Engineers and these usually have a special theme such as an event in the corps history. In the last few years we publicised the corps involvement with Chatham and the centenary of the REA by contacting hundreds of other radio amateurs using the call sign GB100REA and GB200REC. Here are the cards we sent out.<\/a>\u00a0 With a list of operators and If you follow the links you can also see the log. \u00a0Here are some cards we got back<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Virtual\u00a0Meetings<\/strong>
\nBeing forward thinking we are also emailing each other regularly about branch matters and use Skype and we have a reasonably new presence of Facebook and Twitter. We are developing this so we can have a digital life.<\/p>\n

Meetings<\/strong>
\nA single annual general meeting is held in Chatham each year during the corps memorial weekend – although this usually attracts committee only.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About Us REARB MEMBERSHIP People\u00a0join the Royal Engineers Association Radio Branch for various reasons. \u00a0The majority\u00a0are serving or ex professional radio operators, combat signallers, wireless operators, and today CIS Operators. \u00a0Mostly\u00a0they\u00a0serve in\u00a0the Army\u00a0command and control system (C2) as Sappers\u00a0– handling … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-radio-operating"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6cNPB-p","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reasignals.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reasignals.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reasignals.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reasignals.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reasignals.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.reasignals.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":541,"href":"https:\/\/www.reasignals.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reasignals.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reasignals.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reasignals.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}