TO: ALL WOOD COUNTY ARES MEMBERS (OFFICIAL)
ALL ARES AND NON-ARES AMATEURS ANYWHERE (INFORMATION)
FROM: KEN HARRIS WA8LLM ARRL DISTRICT 3 EMERGENCY COORDINATOR
WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS INC.
WOOD COUNTY BULLETIN NR 17.24 DATE: June 11, 2017
SUBJECT: THERE IS NO AM OR PM
When coordinating time around the world the best thing to use is Coordinated Universal Time or UTC. UTC may be known by other names such as Zulu, GMT, and UT. UTC is not a Time Zone, such as EST, Eastern Standard Time, CST, Central Standard Time, or PST Pacific Standard Time, but a time system. No matter where you are in the world UTC is the same day, hour, minute, and second.
When using UTC there is no AM or PM. The UTC time system uses a 2400 hour system, sometimes called Military Time. When it's Midnight, the time is 0000 UTC, when it's Noon it's 1200 UTC, and when it's 6:00 o'clock in the evening, it's 1800 UTC. At one minute before Midnight the time is 2359 UTC. There is no 2400 UTC, but the time starts back over as 0000 UTC.
When participating in contests such as Field Day or other such events when communications around the country or the world are involved, it's best to use the UTC system. When passing messages from station to station you can tell how long it took to get from the originating station to the delivered station. If you need to confirm you talked to some one at a certain time, you shouldn't have any trouble finding it, if you are both using the same time system, UTC.
(Idea for this bulletin was from by Terry Mills, KC8TUE, and Brad Caribine, KC8TYU)
Ken Harris WA8LLM
WCEC
Wood County WV