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Ok, my father got me into watching JAG on Tuesdays every once in a while, and I was wondering what does ZULU mean that is next to the time? The time is already in 24hr format (duh) so does ZULU refer to a military way of saying the timezone, or something else entirely?

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James Hromadka
VisorCentral.com
Personal Website: http://www.Hromadka.com

James,

I went to "AskJeeves" and asked him. This is one of the responses I got:

"Introduction
The world is divided into 24 time zones. For easy reference in communications, a letter of the alphabet has been assigned to each time zone (less the letters "I" and "O"). The "clock" at Greenwich, England is used as the standard clock for international reference of time in communications, military, maritime and other activities that cross time zones. The letter designator for this clock is Z.
Times are usually written in military time or 24 hour format such as 1830Z. To pronounce this, the phonetic alphabet is used for the letter Z, or Zulu. This time is sometimes referred to as Zulu Time because of its assigned letter. It's official name is Universal Coordinated Time or UTC. Previously it had been known as Greenwich Mean Time or GMT but this has been replaced with UTC."

Here is the U.S. Navy explanation:

"What is "Zulu" time?

"Zulu" time is that which you might know as "GMT" (Greenwich Mean Time). Our natural concept of time is linked to the rotation of the earth and we define the length of the day as the 24 hours it takes the earth to spin once on its axis.


As time pieces became more accurate and communication became global, there needed to be a point from which all other world times were based. Since Great Britain was the world's foremost martime power when the concept of latitude and longitude came to be, the starting point for designating longitude was the "prime meridian" which is zero degrees and runs through the Royal Greenwich Observatory, in Greenwich, England, just outside London. As a result, when the concept of time zones was introduced, the "starting" point for calculating the different time zones was/is at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. When it is noon at the observatory, it is five hours earlier (under Standard Time) in Washington, D.C.; six hours earlier in Chicago; seven hours earlier in Denver; and, eight hours earlier in Los Angeles.


Unfortunately the Earth does not rotate at exactly a constant rate. Due to various scientific reasons and increased accuracy in measuring the earth's rotation, a new timescale, called Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), has been adopted and replaces the term GMT.


The Navy, as well as civil aviation, uses the letter "Z" (phonetically "Zulu") to refer to the time at the prime meridian. The U.S. time zones are Eastern ["R", "Romeo]; Central ["S", "Sierra"]; Mountain ["T", "Tango"]; Pacific ["U", "Uniform"]; Alaska ["V", "Victor"], and Hawaii ["W", "William"].

The Department of the Navy serves as the country's official timekeeper, with the Master Clock facility at the U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington, D.C."

Basically, this means that irregardless of where we might be in the world, if we agree to meet in a chat room or something at a specific time, we could use Zulu time and that way we could avoid the confusion of if it's 10PM here, then it's 7PM where he is and do I use my time or his time etc.

Does that make sense???

There were a couple of other time related resources as well.
www.askjeeves.com


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Have Visor Will Travel!

[This message has been edited by visor empowered (edited 04-13-2000).]

[This message has been edited by visor empowered (edited 04-13-2000).]

Very interesting! Where was the link to the military names for the letters of the alphabet? I have to spell my name out on the phone all the time and am tired of using mary and david

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James Hromadka
VisorCentral.com
Personal Website: http://www.Hromadka.com

Let's see if I can remember these from basic training (someone help me out!)

Alpha
Bravo
Charlie
Delta
Echo
Foxtrot
Gulf
Hotel
India
Juliet
Kilo
Lima
Mike
November
Oscar
Papa
Quebec
Romeo
Sierra
Tango
Uniform
Victor
Whiskey
Xray
Yankee
Zulu

And the numbers (phoenetically):

zero
one
two
tree
fower
fife
six
seven
aitch
niner
ten

I'm a bit rusty on the numbers...so you may want to look them up.

Hey thats pretty good from memory. I have ViaVoice and on the reference card it lists the phonetic Alphabet (no numbers though). The only, very small correction, is Gulf. On the card it says Golf. Since I've never been in the army/navy/airforce, and don't plan on being, I really only know what IBM is telling me. Maybe they're wrong.

I remember seeing it as Gulf when I was in the Navy. Of course, I got out in '82.

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Have Visor Will Travel!

I remeber it as Golf, cause that's what I would rather being doing every time I heard it


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Rose's are Red
My Visor is Blue....

GOLF it was in 1968.

chuckle, just have to say that Catherine Bell is HOT..... good job on the phonetic alphabet too. I'm in the Army, and I've always heard/used Golf.

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BlueAidan

fffffttttthhhhppppp

Ok, I sit corrected, but then I was an airedale, not a brown shoe.

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Have Visor Will Travel!

WOW! - I had no idea what I was in for when I decided to read this discussion...

Golf it is for ham radio operators worldwide; also "ait," not aitch.

73,
KB8FUR

I found a prehistoric version of the codes, they are the same with a couple of minor differences:

A = Albert or "Alfa"
D = Denver
G = Golf