There is a term out there

 to describe a situation that often ends badly. The term is 'When a$$holes collide'.

The Treyvon Martin/George Zimmerman incident is one of them.

There is also a similar situation that is likely to wind up entertaining. It is when smart asses collide. Of course, I'll fess up. I'm a smart ass and I'll admit that it can be fun meeting another one.

I think I posted once that I met a kindred soul on the air a couple Memorial Days ago. He was a radio operator on board a WW2 memorial ship, I beleve it was a destroyer but maybe it was something else.

Anyway the ship was fielding calls and there was a moderate pile up. I managed to break through the pileup simply by throwing out my call in the WW2 phonetic alphabet and following it with "Request naval gunfire! Say again! Request naval gunfire!"

The operator must have been a kindred soul because he instantly told the whole pileup to hold up a minute and then asked "Who is requesting naval gunfire?"

I threw my call out in the old WW2 phonetic alphabet and followed it up with, "Able company, 1/64. Easy sector, Dog Green beach. Exposed reinforced concrete bunker. Request armor piercing. Grid 274813. Fire on adjust! Work fast. There's a coupla MG 42s in there keeping us pinned down! "

"Stand by, Able company. I will patch you through directly to FDC!" he answered, and that's just what he did!

Apparently the entire ship was manned by local volenteers and a second later someone got back to me. He identified himself as petty officer So and so simply said, "You got the Fire Direction Center. Gimme the dope!"

When he said 'Gimme the dope' I knew he was an older guy.

So I repeated what I had asked the radio operator for and added, "Shoot the first one a little high! I don't want you to drop one on any of my joes!"

Much to the amusement of some hams waiting to make contact and the chagrin of a few we went through a three round imaginary fire mission. You could hear the guys going through the drill in the background. It was pretty cool. 

I called in the corrections and went through the drill. After the third imaginary round hit after two near misses, I said, "Ya got him, Pal. Punched a real nice hole in it. We got it from here! Thanks!"

"No problem, Mac," he answered. As an aftershot he added, "Hey, don't forget to check out the gams on the tomato in the latest 'Stars and Stripes'!"  What a classic hokey Hollywood WW2 movie line! I was impressed.

Anyway it was an all around good deal for the ship and for any hams listening. They got to hear things as they likely happened back in the day. I know the guys on the crew had a great fun. You could tell by their voices.

When the pileup resumed it seemed that most of the hams that heard it had been amused. Of course, a few seemed a little confused at what had happened but that's par golf. As they used to say back in the day, "There's always some dope that doesn't get the word."




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY