Bunting Tosser QL3 – Oh to fail a test

10 02 2026

In every test there are those who do well, those who pass and those who need to redo said test. This is an expected outcome for just about every organization. I suspect that there is a notation somewhere that says if there aren’t x% of failures, there was some sort error in the teaching of or testing of said lesson.

There were 10 of us on this course. The exam was Encode/Decode. For this exam you had to encode a large number of signals from the great Holy Book and Decode a bunch more. The passing mark was 60%. I and one other in the class passed, the other 8 did not. The higher ups went ballistic. Holy shit was there ever a lot of stress over this.
First the Chief of Communications School came in and interrogated us, signally and as a group.
Then the Chief of Fleet School
Then the Commanding Officer of Fleet School.
Somehow the two of us who passed ended up being grilled harder because we stood out.

After an eternity, it was decided that everyone had to redo the test.

What a pain in the ass.
The outcome was positive thou, because everyone but one had failed that test and the other one who passed had failed something else that left me graduating as the Top Student.
Top Student got to pick which coast they wanted to be posted to.

I chose to stay west.

I chose wisely



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Bunting Tosser QL3 – A Radio?

15 12 2025

So here is a funny thing, when I joined the navy there were two different communicators, the radiomen and the signalman. One would think, by the name, that radiomen spoke on the radio. You would be wrong. Actually talking on a radio was the prevue of the signalmen. All the radiomen did was allow the ship to talk to the shore base, and thus to the rest of the world. Funny old world it is.

I needed to be able to talk on a radio.
I needed to be able to talk clearly on a radio.
I needed to be able to talk clearly on a radio to an ally who might not speak English as a first language.
Thus I had to learn radio procedure. The tone of my voice, the proper enunciation of my words, the proper way to tell another ship where to go in such a way that there was no ambiguity in my signal.
And no, “Breaker, Breaker this is the Bandit, what’s your 20?” does not count as proper radio procedure.

Did you know, that in the English language, there are there are 9 different letters that make the sound of E? First lesson was the phonetic alphabet – Alfa, Bravo…….Zulu. That part was easy. Then you had to enunciate each character with a precise cadence. A 20 character signal could become a bit of a tongue twister by the time you got to the end of getting it all out.
The last big challenge was to remember who each signal was from. The moment you sent a signal out it was taken that the signal came from the most senior officer aboard. God help you if you sent a signal from your Commanding Officer across the circuit when you had the Admiral aboard. In my career I managed to mess that one up a few times.

Once you managed to get all of the parts together, the whole system worked rather well. I could get on a ship to ship radio circuit, tell my German speaking counter part to tell his CO to go over yonder and look for the bad guys, without a whole lot of difficulty. Heck, I could even do it with an Auzzie. The only times I tended to have problems was when it was with an US ship.

A last point about radio procedure. In movies or TV you can often hear people saying OVER AND OUT. Don’t
Just don’t
In radio procedure
OVER is a code word for I have finished speaking, I expect a reply from you.
OUT is a code word for I have finished speaking, I do not expect a reply from you.
More that once, my classmates and I got our knuckles wrapped for uttering this contradictory phase

OUT


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Bunting Tosser QL3 – Getting Secured

14 12 2025

One of the hallmarks of being a Naval Signalman is that you get to see everything. Any message going into and out of the ship, you are on the bridge, and even the secret squirrel stuff. The first major step in your career is getting your TOP SECRET security clearance – without it, you ain’t a signalman.

Half way through my course I got called into the presence of THE CHIEF – I talked about him in a previous post. Shit, it is never a good thing when you get summoned by him, in fact it is usually very bad. This time, however, it wasn’t. Sitting on his desk was a very official looking hunk of paper with my name on it.

“This is your security clearance” he began ” and you are the first in your class to receive it.” He then spent the next 10 minutes describing in horrifying detail what it actually meant and what would happen if I fucked up now that I had it. After his spiel he pointed at a line and told me to sign it.
I signed
He folded to paper and put it into my file folder and told me to get out of his office.

I was official, I had my TS. I was ready to take on the world……
Stay tuned for more interesting events with my security clearance, it gets fun


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Bunting Tosser QL3 – Message Handling

9 12 2025

IMO, the least glamorous job a NavSig had was message handling. Any message leaving the ship had to go through the message center dayman. Some officer wants 100tonnes of food when we hit port, they scribbled on a piece of paper, handed it to the dayman and the dayman had to make it look pretty to give to the Commanding Officer (CO). If there was a spelling mistake, it had to be corrected before the CO saw it – this was in the days before personal computers so I became pretty efficient with white out and correction tape.

Once the message was all nice and pretty for the CO to look at and approve, there was always the possibility that he could say “NO, send it back and tell that officer to do it again”. The dayman could do a lot of walking around the ship getting one message actually signed and ready to be sent ashore.

The Basic Message Form (BMF) was a sheet that had all sorts of little boxes to fill in when you were making up a message. Some of the obvious ones were
Who was it going to?
Who is it coming from? a very important distinction when you had a senior officer aboard
How important is this message?
How classified is this message?
There were other little boxes that could be filled out and, as a signalman, I had to know what they were, how they were identified and what they all meant.
The message handling section of my course was the most difficult for me and when it came time for that particular test, I did a lot of sweating.

On the day of the test I sat at my desk and did the easy bits first. Then it was panic time, until I noticed a copy of the BMF, with all the boxes filled in, taped to the wall at my elbow.
I passed the test.
Two days later I was called into the office of the CHIEF.
You never want to be called into the office of the CHIEF.
The CHIEF spoke
“There was a copy of the BMF on the wall beside your desk during the test. Did you look at it during the test?”
“No CHIEF” I replied. Like what the heck else was I going to answer?
“Don’t make me have you brought in here again, Carry On”

The CHIEF said don’t do it, I obeyed.
I also passed that test




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Bunting Tosser QL3- THE BOOK

8 12 2025

As a species, we really like to communicate. There are those among us who do so to excess, but that is another story. Long before we invented radios, if ship A wanted to say something to ship B, it was by some sort of visual communication, flags or a flashing light. Now, while technically it is possible to send up a series of flags that spell out “Hey, ship B, I want you to turn 90 degrees to Port and I want you to do it right now”, that is a lot of flags and by the time you had them all hoisted and properly read… you can probably see how that sort of thing becomes very cumbersome. The solution to this was to create a specific and universal code that is quick and easy to send and be understood.

Three flags can make the message described above
TURN PORT 9
Where those flags are hoisted and when they are taken down will give an exact description of what is to be done and when it is to be done. And the really cool thing about it is that anyone, from any allied navy to us can read and understand it.

I was introduced the the holiest of holy books for a signalman, THE BOOK – I am still bound by the holy script within such that I may not speak its’ name. THE BOOK is about 2 inches thick and within its’ pages are hundreds of different alfa numeric combinations that can be sent by flashing light morse code, signal flags, semaphore, or ship to ship tactical radio. There are specific sections for ship maneuvering, anti air/ surface/subsurface warfare, mine hunting, Help me there is a big ass hole in the bottom of my ship, and the all important – Splice the Mainbrace.

Splice the Mainbrace was a signal that I only every saw once while I was in the Navy, it comes from the time of sailing warships. The mainbrace was the line that went from the bow, all the way up to the top of all the masts and back down to the stern. It was the main line that held the masts upright. Splicing the ropes together for this brace was an all hands operation, as such, each man was given a tot of rum (about 2.5 ounces) to make it happen. These days warships generally don’t have a mainbrace, however, the order can still be made. In the Canadian Navy it has to be given by head of our military – HRM. I will get into the ceremony its self in a later post.

Back to THE BOOK
In order to pass QL3, you had to be able to encode and decode some very complex signals. I loved to doing this sort of code work.
There is a civilian equivalent of THE BOOK called The International Code Of Signals, or INTERCO. This book didn’t have any of the warfare sections but it did have a way to prescribe medicines and how to assist a woman to give birth. I had to be able to use this book as well.

I was to find out that there were all kinds of very cool ways to use THE BOOK, not the least of which was to grab the 2nd Officer of the Watch by the scruff of the neck, point his stupid nose into THE BOOK and say “SIR, that is what the signal means!”
To be honest, I never did the grabbing by the scruff of the neck, however, I did have to use those specific words and tone later in my career.

And that is all I want to say about that



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Bunting Tosser – QL3

1 12 2025

Naval Communicator Military Occupation Code 262. I was going to learn a for real trade in the Canadian Navy. My very first trade course, and no, I have no idea why the first course was labeled as QL3 – military logic at its finest.

Bunting Tosser comes from long ago when there wasn’t any such thing as radios, cell phones or gasp, even the internet. Back then, when you wanted to talk to another ship, your friendly bunting tossers would hoist flags to get the message across – I suspect that the ever famous GGF hadn’t been invented yet.
When I was introduced to to this trade, the Naval Signalman was responsible for

  • flag signals
  • flashing light morse code signals
  • semaphore – short distance arm signals
  • ship to ship tactical radio signals
  • fleet maneuvering
  • ship ceremonial
  • ship to ship/shore messages

I am sure I have left out a few things. Needless to say, it was a lot. On the start date of the course we were all huddled together in our little home room and were welcomed to Communications School. We were in the basement of the building, the upper deck was home to the Radiomen. All they had to do was make sure the ship could talk to the shore, admittedly an important task but let us be real for a moment – Signalmen were by far the more important people.

And thus we started.
First lesson, what was morse code? Many of you will have seen/heard it in movies – a long series of dots and dashes when done by light or series of di dah sounds when done by radio. For the record, any time you see or hear it in the movies, the only thing that is accurate about it is the blinking light.
QL3 standard was reading 8 words per minute. At the beginning of everyday we would go outside, rain, shine, hurricane or whatever mother nature had to throw at us, and read a biffer. Each corner of Comm School had a blinking light set to 4, 6, 8 or 10 wpm and you went out and read it.

It took me about 3 weeks to finally get to the point I could read 4wpm, once you get the hang of the pulsing light, it gets to be relatively easy. At week 4 we had to start sending morse code by light and we all discovered that reading a human sender is much easier than reading a machine. It was also very clear to see who had been drinking the night before. One Monday morning I looked at that stupid light and just couldn’t focus long enough to read anything other that the SFX (Signal Flashing Exercise that started each biffer) before my breakfast decided to reappear – not my best moment but I digress. At the end of the course I hit 10wpm and was happy.

Next up, Flag Signals



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OSQAB – Ceremonial and the Divisional System

30 11 2025

There is a lot of ceremony in the military. Who salutes who, where you salute, where you don’t salute….. the list goes on and on. During our time doing OSQAB we got drilled in it daily.
The other big thing that was drilled into us was the Divisional System (DS). The biggest part of the DS was that there is always someone whose job it was to see that I was properly taken care of, my medical, administration, did I receive a letter from Mom….. all of that important stuff. One thing that really stood out about this whole thing was that I was given the right to ask to speak directly to my Commanding Officer, and that request could not be refused.

Imagine that, the greenest behind the ear ordinary seaman/private could talk to the CO. The only real caveat to that was it had better be something worth talking about but that is a different story all in itself. It is a good thing to know that you can talk to the boss about something that is going awry, back in the good old days before Lord Nelson created the DS you weren’t allowed to dream of speaking to the Captain unless it was to say Yes Sir or No Sir.

Not only were you permitted to ask to speak to the Commanding Officer, in the navy there was a tradition where the CO would call up all of the lower deck crew and speak to them, one at a time.
Everyone would be lined up and marched forward one at a time. You would salute and the Coxswain, the senior non commissioned officer on board, would state your name, rank, last course you completed and any other notable thing about you. The CO would then ask you how you felt you were doing and then dismiss you.

During my time in the military, I have had a fair number of different commanding officers and any of them who were worth their salt interacted with their crew.

The most interesting ceremonial thing I learned was what happened to someone when they became the CO of a ship, when that person signed on the dotted line, that person became the ship. At times they would be referred to as the name of their ship, or command. Pretty heady stuff. You may have hear the phrase “Captain going down with his ship”….. it is really just the ship going down.

ps. I don’t believe that very many Captains actually go down with their ship anymore, unless they are a submarine


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OSQAB – Damage Control

25 11 2025

“Excuse me Captain, I need to report that there is a hole in ships hull”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well Sir, there is about a foot of water on 3 Deck”
“Ah, well, that does sound like there is a hole then. Be so good as to fix it will you?”

As with my last post about having a fire aboard, when you find that there is a hole in the ships hull, you can’t just call 911, you are the one who gets to fix it. Fix it or start swimming, it is all about choice. Now, as a general rule of thumb, ships don’t spontaneously develop holes in the side of them – that is unless someone is careless with a can of paint remover…..

On board ship there are any number of things that can bend, break or decide that they no longer wish to remain in the size and shape that they were when they were installed. At damage control school we learn what to do when the ship hits a log and springs a leak – actually had that happen on a ship I was on, or when a pipe is just to worn out. You learn about various types of hose clamps, ways to brace a buckling deck, how to use the various flood control devices on board your ship and how the ship is organized to do all of this.

Once you have sat through a bunch of classes, seen a few very old movies and practiced cutting lumber, you get sent do Tumbold. Tumbold is a three story section of a ship that is about 30’x30′. On each of the decks are holes in the bulkhead, burst pipes, leaking hatches and doors. To make things just a bit more fun, the structure is tilted in two directions. The class gets sent into the structure, the doors are closed and the instuctor starts turning the water on. Soon there are two decks filling with cold water that we have to go down and fix things. On a hot summer day, this is actually a fairly fun event. On a cold, deary day, not so much. Passing lumber, tools, measuring sticks up and down ladders that have water pouring down them can be a bit difficult to deal with. After all of the repairs are made, the water gets turned off, the instructor looks at what you have done and says….
“Do it again, and do it right”
If you get serious and get the job done, you could only have to it once. If you screw around, well… You don’t leave until you get it right and if you fuck around, the Chief says Fail, and you have to come back and do it all over again. There was a class of junior officers who decided to fuck around. They found out. They stayed there until 4pm on a Friday, were failed, and had to come back next week to do it all again. They were most displeased about this, their course training officer was very unhappy……

Back to the story. On the lowest deck of the structure, it is very possible to have 3 – 4 feet of water to deal with. It is a pain to work with chunks of wood, in cold water that can be up to your chest, on a tilted deck….

Fire fighting and damage control school happened, and usually every year or two while you were posted to a ship you got dinged to go. You had a lot of incentive to get it right because when you were actually sailing, they loved to throw drills at you, usually just after you had gotten to sleep.

And then there is WUPS – when a group of trainers come on board and test the ships company on all of the drills. The fun of WUPS will come at a later post

TTFN


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OSQAB – Fire Fighting/Damage Control – FIRE

23 11 2025

There you are, steaming your way to some tropical paradise and all of a sudden, a fire breaks out where it shouldn’t – like say right beside the ammunition magazine. What are you going to do? Nope, calling 911 just won’t cut it. Everyone on board has a very vested interest in putting out that fire, so everyone gets dubbed Fire Fighter #1, #2…… ect until the fire goes out, or your ship sinks.

On the West side of Esquimalt harbour is one of the FF/DC schools for the Canadian Forces. Back when I was still in the navy, the fire fighting structure was called T. T was a steel box, about 30×30 feet. At the entrance was a double door that swung open. The fire team (four crew and a leader) would go through the door with 2 hose and work to put out a diesel fire that was below your feet. It was dark as hell, you had a breathing device on your chest that made me claustrophobic and the only thing you could see was the fire burning at your feet. Pretty exciting, like brown knickers exciting.

Stepping back a bit in the time line, we did learn the basics of fighting a diesel fire in a shallow pan out in the open air first. There was 2 hoses, a high pressure hose and a low pressure hose. The lp had a nozzle that would create a wall of fine mist that was between you and the fire, pretty impressive and damn effective. The basic attack was the two hoses with handlers in front, the attack leader and two hose handlers behind. It is pretty impressive just how difficult it is to move a hose full of water around. The team would approach the burning pan of diesel, the lp hose would create the wall of mist to protect the team and the hp would sweep the nozzle back and forth until the fire was out. Simple.

Getting back into T, the pan of diesel was under a grate on the floor. Once it started burning, there was no seeing anything but the flames themselves. The team goes in, nozzles spitting out tons of water, the fire goes out, the team emerges from the other side and gets the pass mark for the class.
Now it was my turn to be the fire team leader. My team is just outside the doors, the doors open and in we go. We advance, doing all of the proper procedures and the fire gets beaten back. We advance. The fire comes back, right under our feet.
Shit
I direct the hp man to point the fire under our toes, he does, the fire retreats a bit, we step forward a pace. Fire returns
Shit
After repeating the proper procedure again, the course instructor takes mercy on me and has the fire put out with foam.
Once we got out of T, the instructor notes that there is a big chunk of carbon built up under the grate. As more and more fires were lit, this carbon got incandescent with heat and every time I put the fire out the chunk of carbon would reignite it.

At the end of the days activity, everyone was covered in soot.
I checked my knickers…..
I never got used to going into T, it always gave me the willies.

Next Up
Captain, there is a hole in your ship


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OSQAB – Life Raft Drill

22 11 2025

The course that all of us navy types had to take. This course was supposed to teach us everything about how to be a sailor in 2 months – I think it was 2 months, I could be wrong, my memory retrieval system is a little fuzzy these days.

Our course instructor was a decent enough person and so my journey to becoming a sailor began. There was the marching as a group, the short time for lunches, the yada yada yada about the history of the navy…… a lot of boring stuff that we needed to know.

One of the two really interesting parts of this course was life raft drills. For anyone who has been on a ferry or other passenger vessel, you have probably seen the inflatable life raft containers secured out on the upper deck. They are a 6 foot long by 3 foot in diameter fiber glass tube. The theory is that if the ship goes down, these things will automatically release from their brackets, rise to the surface and self inflate. While theory is a wonderful thing, it is always good to actually see it work and know that you actually can use it properly.

This is how they actually work. A hydrostatic release device connects the life raft securing straps to the ship. There is also a 20 foot long line, called a painter, that one end is tied to the ships deck, the other end goes into the life raft container and is connected to a pin. When the ship sinks and gets to about 20 feet underwater, the hydrostatic release device lets go and the life raft floats to the surface. Once the life raft is 20 feet away from the sinking ship, the painter is pulled taught and the pin gets pulled free. That pin triggers a carbon dioxide canister to discharge and then the life raft inflates.

The fun part of this lesson is that we actually get thrown into a pool, trigger the life raft to inflate and then get into the raft from the water. The last part isn’t quite as easy as it appears. The other drill we were taught is how to right the raft if it inflates upside down, again, not as easy as it appears.

Once the powers to be were satisfied that we knew what they wanted us to know, we were treated to a lovely movie, made sometime in the 60’s by the Royal Navy about what to do when your ship decides to decorate the sea floor. A very stirring performance in which a group of 20 sailors survive for a couple of days on the high seas, with only the instruction book, some good old British naval discipline and a deck of cards. It is amazing what you can do with a standard deck of playing cards.

Next story – Fire Fighting/Damage Control


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