"You need to know what time it is in Zulu!!!"
by Gary Tangrady K5GST
You need to know what time it is in Zulu!!!!!! Man, that one used to bug me to no end and in a former military job I had I was responsible for manpower requirements at units located all around the globe. I bought myself a cheap wrist watch that had an analog face on it (primarily because I am old enough to have learned to tell time on a real clock) that also had a digital readout at the bottom of the face. Well that gave me the capability to know the time in some other time zone and since my family only lived one time zone away it was easy enough for me to figure out the time in New York without a watch!
Ah-Ha! Now I could keep track of the Zulu time because military traffic was always in Zulu and I was at the time getting involved in MARS. Voila! I now always had the Zulu time right on my wrist. But when I get home from work I take my watch off and I find myself sitting at the desk in front of a computer and wondering what the Zulu time was again.
Finally I found a neat little web site: http://nist.time.gov Keep it in your favorites folder and when you need it click on it, it takes you to the main page and through the use of a set of rather small buttons just below the map of the U.S. you can select the Zulu time zone. Then you will see the Zulu time in good sized numbers that most of us Old Timers can read. (Some of us still need our glasses.) And what makes it neat is that it will also display a map of the world showing you dark and light zones so you can tell whether its night or day in Zulu land.
I like to bring it up and minimize it keeping it active in the background and when I need a quick reference to the current time in Zulu I pop it back up and Voila! When you're trying to prepare a message and you need to know the Zulu time for the DTG (DateTime Group) it's right there with the click of a button.
If you are not wearing such a fancy timepiece or are not in front of your computer just remember that for us here in the Central Time Zone that Zulu never changes. Zulu remains the same. It does not follow the decisions of the U.S. Congress. During Daylight Savings time like we are in right now add 5 hours to the current time and you will know what time it is in Zulu. When we go back to Standard time add 6 hours. But, also remember that at midnight Zulu the date in Zulu land changes. So if it's 2100 hours local on Jul 4th of 2007, it's 0200 Zulu on the 5th of Jul 2007. 0200 Zulu is still only 5 hours in front of 2100 Local regardless of the date. The date in Zulu land changed because they went past midnight. |
