Here's why ZULU time is called ZULU time!

cipio

cipio

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I think most of us know that Zulu time represents GMT/UTC time, but I don't think everyone knows why we actually call it "Zulu" time. Why Zulu?

Here's why!

(And why there's a Romeo, Sierra, Tango, and Uniform time in the United States...)

 
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I didn't know that! I think your learning too much. you need to start flying. :)
 
JasonM said:
I didn't know that! I think your learning too much. you need to start flying. :)
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Dude! I'm trying!

Funny thing is, I don't even remember why I ended up wondering why we call it zulu time...but I ended up down some Internet rabbit trail, and figured I would clear it up for everyone! LOL!
 
Only the military would be stupid enough to do a new system that followed a two way pattern. Why would you not start at the Date Line and continue around in a single progression? :dunno:
 
Henning said:
Only the military would be stupid enough to do a new system that followed a two way pattern. Why would you not start at the Date Line and continue around in a single progression? :dunno:
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Yeah, it's strange... It runs positive to the right until Mike at +12, then goes and does all of the negative numbers running left, starting at November at -1.

It must have made sense to someone somewhere. ;-)

Oh...and I didn't mention this in the video...but there is no Juliet in there...although it is sometimes just to refer to the observer's local time. (says the Internet).
 
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Cool, I never knew that, thanks for the share!
 
cipio said:
Yeah, it's strange... It runs positive to the right until Mike at +12, then goes and does all of the negative numbers running left, starting at November at -1.

It must have made sense to someone somewhere. ;-)

Oh...and I didn't mention this in the video...but there is no Juliet in there...although it is sometimes just to refer to the observer's local time. (says the Internet).
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Sounds like Juliet was reserved for Local Apparent Noon, or your exact offset from the Prime/Date Meridians. Not sure why they would reserve a designator for that unless they they use it in targeting designation, but I can't figure why they would do targeting that way either.:dunno: the only time I ever use Local Apparent Noon is running a noon/sun sight doing celestial navigation. Not much sense in assigning a letter to it.
 
cipio said:
Yeah, it's strange... It runs positive to the right until Mike at +12, then goes and does all of the negative numbers running left, starting at November at -1.

It must have made sense to someone somewhere. ;-)

Oh...and I didn't mention this in the video...but there is no Juliet in there...although it is sometimes just to refer to the observer's local time. (says the Internet).
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it's all right there on the face of a clock along with a calendar...
 
Henning said:
Only the military would be stupid enough to do a new system that followed a two way pattern. Why would you not start at the Date Line and continue around in a single progression? :dunno:
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It works the same way west and east longitudes do.

If you're seaborne, a time zone is 15 deg of longitude. The only reason it differs on land is because it was made up by railroad companies.
 
Clark1961 said:
A 24 hour clock and the calendar part is the dateline
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Yeah...I get how it works...but that doesn't have the alphabetic designators. That's the point of the video...not how timezones work, but why we use the word ZULU for GMT. Might be common knowledge in some circles but most folks are never exposed to the alphabetic time zone indicators. I have yet to see a watch that has ABCDEFGHIKLMZNOPQRSTUVWXY around the dial. ;-) Not saying it doesn't exist...but I haven't seen it. It would actually be pretty cool...maybe.
 
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cipio said:
Yeah...I get how it works...but that doesn't have the alpha-numeric designators. That's the point of the video...not how timezones work, but why we use the word ZULU for GMT. Might be common knowledge in some circles but most folks are never exposed to the alphabetic time zone indicators. I have yet to seen a watch that has ABCDEFGHIKLMZNOPQRSTUVWXY around the dial. ;-) Not saying it doesn't exist...but I haven't seen it.
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In your vid you used the phrase that was along the lines of: for a reason that made sense to someone, which implied that it didn't make sense to you. Put the letters on a 24 hour clock and it makes sense. As I understand it, the airforce used (might still do it) to label their clocks with the local letter code at the top. It's been awhile since I read that so I have no idea where to find the reference. Anyway, to make a long story short, the break in the letter code sequence is a reminder of the date line.
 
Clark1961 said:
In your vid you used the phrase that was along the lines of: for a reason that made sense to someone, which implied that it didn't make sense to you.
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Oh..okay. That wasn't in the video, that was just a comment I made in jest to someone else's question of "Why would you not start at the Date Line and continue around in a single progression? "

So I was just say'n "yeah it would have made sense if it just wrapped all the way around in alphabetical order." Although I do understand the zulu separation makes it clear where the middle is. Either way...the clock doesn't tell you that -5 is Romeo or +1 is Alpha. And on the clock face, you can't just go around clockwise to get from A-Z. You'd actually have to go clockwise for positive offset until you hit Mike at 12:00, then go back counter-clockwise for November-Yankee for the negative offsets.

I understand what you are trying to say...I'm just trying to make the point that the clock face doesn't tell you what I did in the video (because that's what I thought you were referring to!) All good... info is info is info! LOL!
 
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cipio said:
Either way...the clock doesn't tell you that -5 is Romeo or +1 is Alpha.
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But the clock does have that information when it is labeled as I described in my previous post...
 
Yes. Okay. If labeled as such, then yes.
 
Henning said:
Only the military would be stupid enough to do a new system that followed a two way pattern. Why would you not start at the Date Line and continue around in a single progression? :dunno:
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Because it was started by the Spanish military ?
 
Henning said:
Only the military would be stupid enough to do a new system that followed a two way pattern. Why would you not start at the Date Line and continue around in a single progression? :dunno:
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Bowditch gets some credit for publishing the letter designations...
 
MAKG1 said:
It works the same way west and east longitudes do.

If you're seaborne, a time zone is 15 deg of longitude. The only reason it differs on land is because it was made up by railroad companies.
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I understand how it works with Greenwich being the center of the civilization, my point is that it's silly to design a new system that keeps the stupid parts of the old system and only complicates things an extra step.

We could have simplified the entire global time coordination by adding an extra zone number ahead of hours counting around the globe backwards.
 
I knew about the lettering of time zones before and why Zulu is called Zulu.

But what just hit me is that if someone uses the L suffix to indicate "local" time (such as 1800L), it might be misunderstood as Kamchatka time? :)
 
I always thought Zulu time was the time used by pilots of an african tribe......:rolleyes::lol:
 
That's not military time!
An example of military time (for Marines) is when Mickey's big hand is on the 12 and Mickey's little hand is on the 5. That's 1700 hours for you Army guys. For us Air Force hot rocks it's Happy Hour.
 
Henning said:
I understand how it works with Greenwich being the center of the civilization, my point is that it's silly to design a new system that keeps the stupid parts of the old system and only complicates things an extra step.

We could have simplified the entire global time coordination by adding an extra zone number ahead of hours counting around the globe backwards.
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But that's how it's done. Conventions don't change, even when stupid. Why are there 24 hours in a day, 365 or 366 days in a year, 60 seconds in a minute, and so on? What's the point of AM and PM? Why are longitudes expressed in degrees instead of hours (which is how they are measured)? Why the he'll do we still use 2500 year old Greek conventions for stellar magnitudes?

The French tried to simplify this after the 1789 revolution. See how well it worked?
 
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MAKG1 said:
But that's how it's done. Conventions don't change, even when stupid. Why are there 24 hours in a day, 365 or 366 days in a year, 60 seconds in a minute, and so on? What's the point of AM and PM? Why are longitudes expressed in degrees instead of hours (which is how they are measured)? Why the he'll do we still use 2500 year old Greek conventions for stellar magnitudes?
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At least by the 23rd Century we'll be using decimal-based "star dates".

:wink2:
 
MAKG1 said:
But that's how it's done. Conventions don't change, even when stupid. Why are there 24 hours in a day, 365 or 366 days in a year, 60 seconds in a minute, and so on? What's the point of AM and PM? Why are longitudes expressed in degrees instead of hours (which is how they are measured)? Why the he'll do we still use 2500 year old Greek conventions for stellar magnitudes?

The French tried to simplify this after the 1789 revolution. See how well it worked?
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There are 24 hrs in a day because it makes for even math with a 360° circle, 15° per hour. In spherical trig it's no longer seconds in use but decimals of a minute, minutes of latitude also being equivalent to nautical miles. There are practical navigation reasons we use those, however using the bloody east/west +/- system we also complicate all the navigation formulas.
 
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