UK AOC Newsletter - November 2005

42^nd Annual AOC Symposium and Convention

Some reflections on the 42nd Annual AOC Symposium held 23-26 October at a very wet Virginia Beach, USA, courtesy of Hurricane Wilma. The presentations as usual were varied, ranging from the very technical - "The use of Sine/Cosine Wavelets for Analysis of Complex Threat Emitter Waveforms" - to the more blatant company marketing plugs.

Those of you who have attended these US conventions will know that they are also famous for their evening receptions. This time Boeing entertained us, somewhat unusually, to a country singer (unknown in the UK but probably "world famous") together with ice cream and a buy-your-own drinks bar. Thankfully, Northrop-Grumman and ITT responded with their usual magnificent hospitality to rescue the situation.

From our UK Chapter point of view, the highlight of the Convention was the Lifetime Achievement award presented to one of our own Directors, Jim MacCulloch, the first time this award has been given to a UK member. This was only the second US Convention that Jim had managed to attend in 23 years and he still half-believed it was a wind-up until his name was called to walk up and receive the award from the outgoing President, 'Pepper' Thomas.

Jim, we much appreciate your sterling service to the EW community for nearly 40 years and trust you will now wait just a little longer to get the award itself, once the spelling mistakes on it have been corrected!

Once again the UK Chapter managed to achieve an Excellent Award for the Large Chapter category, finishing only two points behind the Chapter of the Year winners, the Dixie Crows. There are three award categories – Excellent, Outstanding and Distinguished - with Distinguished being the highest.

We have had Distinguished once and Outstanding twice but our usual win is Excellent. Significantly, no other chapter (apart from the winners of each category) won anything this year so the UK Chapter did particularly well. We also saw the inauguration of the new AOC President, Ken Krech. Hope springs eternal for a truly international organisation.

AOC European Symposium 2006

Members will be aware that we are hosting the next AOC European Symposium which will be held in London on 2-5 May 2006. There is still time for budding presenters to send papers to our VP, Roger Blackburn (rhblackburn@dstl.gov.uk).

We have been offered some 25 papers thus far but are looking for about another ten to avoid the embarrassment of no-shows, which unfortunately occurred at the 42nd Convention. We are also looking for sponsors for our European event so if you or your company's coffers are overflowing (not applicable to those who depend on MoD contracts) we would be extremely grateful for your support.

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Electronic Warfare Symposium, Shrivenham, 23-24 November 2005

A final call to attend this inaugural Electronic Warfare Symposium. This event is jointly sponsored by the UK Tower of Excellence for EW Research, the Defence College of Management & Technology and Cranfield University. Further details of the Symposium and a Registration Form for those wishing to attend can be found on the RMCS Cranfield website.

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AOC Christmas Dinner 2005

And finally, a polite reminder to all members that the annual AOC UK Chapter Christmas Dinner will be held in the Royal Air Force Club, London, on Friday 9 December.

PLEASE BOOK NOW!

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