HF Exercise

This week I had mainly High Frequency (HF) exercise on the radio set. It start off with the smaller version of Ex Livewire called Ex-AHF. It focus on setting up Near Vertical Incidence Skywave (NVIS) antenna and using the different layer of the atmosphere to transmit radio waves.

It was followed by a 3 days 2 nights exercise on HF (Ex Livewire). My detachment was sent to the Tanjong Gul Camp at the Tuas area to set up 4 types of antenna. The first task was to find the frequency to time ratio of the various frequencies. For HF frequencies, different frequency behave differently in the day and night due to the usage of the atmosphere. In Singapore, the results were not that accurate due to its small area. But it was said that we can use HF to communicate with people in Taiwan that was like 2000km away from Singapore.

On our third day, we were to establish link to the Brunei Camp. The mission was half successful as they were able to receive our signals clearly but was unable to communicate back to us. It was quite a disappointment but nevertheless I learnt quite a bit during the last 3 days of the exercise.

Out