Fighting Ships 2014/2015

This years edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships, edited by Commodore Stephen Saunders RN, is now available to purchase from IHS for approximately £580.

Virginia Class SSN “Missouri” of the US Navy exiting Faslane. This image is in Fighting Ships 2014/2105

Fighting Ships was first published in 1898 by John Fredrick Thomas Jane. Mad on miniature wargames, he created Fighting Ships as a reference for a Sea Battle game that he devised. He wanted to ensure everyone that played the game had the correct information on World Navy fleets, armaments and other information. From this start, the book has evolved into what it is today

From only line-drawings that were in the early editions, now the yearbook contains well over a thousand excellent quality photographs and I’m very pleased to see again that it contains some of mine, at least 22 that I’ve found so far

Swedish Navy Gavle Class Corvette “Sundsvall” (K24) is one image in the 2014/2015 edition of Fighting Ships

Along with images, I also do my best to provide Stephen with information on the Russian Navy, mainly with data on Project deliveries, upgrades and commissions/decommissions. This isn’t always the easiest task as my Russian isn’t exactly fluent and it does sometimes bring out some quite confusing data. That said though, it is good fun going through everything, analysing the data and compiling it into something that hopefully gets included in this great publication

Most people will say that £580 is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a book, and I would tend to agree; however, Fighting Ships (and other IHS Jane’s yearbook publications) are not aimed at the general public as such, but more at the Armed Forces of the World and Defence Industries that provide technology, weapons etc to the Forces. As I’ve said previously, the quality of information, photos and data is second to none in my opinion. I have most of their yearbooks myself

C-2A 162164 of VRC-30 turning final at NAS North Island, one of the images included in this years Fighting Ships

Don’t forget though, if £580 is too rich for you, I sell older copies of most of Jane’s publications. Further information is available on my Jane’s sales link at the top of this blog, going there will also provide you with PDF examples of most books available

The Spectrum Monitor articles and the MilCom Forum

I’m pleased to say that I’ve had two articles published in the July edition of e-Mag The Spectrum Monitor

The first article is about the Joint Warrior exercise that took place in March/April this year, and how and what to listen out for when these exercises take place twice a year in the UK. I wasn’t expecting this article to be published until September so this was an added bonus this month

The second article is about how I got into listening to Air Traffic Control and how this then took me down the road to becoming an Air Traffic Controller, an aviation/military photographer and writer, and into monitoring the radios in general – in particular HF

As well as the articles, there’s about 11 photos of mine included alongside. I also provided the cover image.

The magazine is available either to buy individually at $3 each or by subscription for $24 for one year. Either way the magazine is well worth the money

MilCom Forum

About a month ago now, a new forum was created for the Military Monitoring enthusiast – MilCom

The main aim of the forum is bring together those of us that are interested in monitoring Military Communications, be it VHF/UHF, HF, CW, data, SATCOM etc. The posting of radio logs is actively encouraged. In just a month the membership has passed 110 with posts already at 850+; and this is without any real advertising of the forum. One thing you’ll notice if you head over, is that it isn’t just about Aviation. The forum covers all areas of Military Communications – Aviation, Maritime and Land (Space too if you really want to)

As well as the forum area there is a database section which contains information on Military Callsigns, VHF/UHF frequencies, HF frequencies and other things such as common abbreviations and terms used by the Military. There’s also an interactive map. These databases are updated almost daily by a team of us, and can also have anything missing submitted to the team for addition once confirmed. The databases are continually growing, are more accurate than any printed publication (which is generally out of date the day of printing) and more importantly – FREE

The only proviso to this data being available is that members participate in the forum and do not just “lurk”. The membership is continually monitored by the team and trimmed if necessary. That being said, we are a friendly group so don’t let the rules put you off – instead join up and participate.