Have you actually read this thread?
Because noone is telling cadets that they can’t use the word in a sentence.
Err yes, thank you, I have and I did!
My impression is that a member was asking for an explanation on what they were told was a Proword, which subsequently evolved into whether said word was indeed a correct Proword or not; the discussion in this thread offered supporting and contradicting advice. However, the two comments ‘CONTACT in this example simply isn’t a proword’, followed closely by ‘CONTACT is a proword, so you shouldn’t be using it to mean something else. That’s how people get confused’, sparked my interest and to my mind showed there is indeed confusion.
My first post was intended to be in what I thought was the spirit of this site, ie a discussion where members can offer their opinions, explanations and perhaps even put forward some comments to questions that have been raised. I simply pointed out that a word can mean two things and to dismiss one meaning would be wrong. In the above examples, I agree entirely, CONTACT is not a Proword which has the formally assigned meaning ‘Get In Touch With XXX on Frequency YYY’, but it does actually mean that; so to then see a comment that says you cannot use the word because it is also a Proword is confusing and wrong. In summary; yes, CONTACT is a Proword, but not one that Air Cadets would normally use; yes, it also means ‘get in touch with someone’ which is the context we (Air Cadets) would normally associate it with; yes, you can use them both and it all depends on who is using the word and in particular, the context in which it is used.
OVER
I had meant we were told to fill out a sheet of explanations for prowords. The proword in question being ‘contact’. As similarly to ‘repeat’ it is not used by the air cadets in the term of fire again we still don’t say it and instead use ‘say again’. Following on with that it would be logical there is a regularly used solution instead of saying contact as we are using shared frequencies. So on the course we were told to ‘send a message to’ instead of contacting someone.
Simples
Probably a wise decision Rifle! It could be interesting on a shared net if someone asked the Army to ‘Contact the nearest Air Cadet unit’ - ‘fix bayonets lads (and lasses of course)’. I don’t know whether the Army formally only use the word Contact in the one situation, for my own benefit, I’ll try to find out.
Out of interest, were you using the LASER Radio Facility at Halton or did you just base yourself there and use your own kit? I’m looking to run some Radio training for a nearby Wg next year and if this can be done at the same time as someone else is around, it makes the nets more interesting for the cadets.
We were in the LASER Radio training bit, I’m not sure if our wing provided the equipment or it was from LASER as we only used UHF handhelds, I’ve got a feeling they were from our wing. It was pretty good for us and meant the marching was far less than if we had been in the training building down the road. I don’t know what the staff thought of it though.
we were using the Wing kit, rather than LASER kit, although Malcolm is happy for us to use the full extent of the facility should we need to (HF etc)
it is the third course we have run at Halton and it works well. has certain disadvantages in terms of available space for exercises which we were not so restricted to in the past (previous location) but overall is a nicer place to be!