Airwaves and Callsign 2015 - Book Review

Airwave and Callsign 2015 from Photavia Press describes itself as "The complete UK civil and military HF / VHF / UHF aviation frequency and callsign directory" and I can't really argue with that.

Starting off on the inside cover you get a list of all the Airwave and Callsign abbreviations such as MATZ (Military Air Traffic Zone) and SAR (Search and Rescue), a handy list that is easy to get to.  Once you get into the book itself you are presented with all the UK and European Civil and Military area radar frequencies.  Military discrete frequencies are next, followed by air surveillance, tactical and airfield frequencies - the latter is a very comprehensive list covering a number of pages.  VHF/UK frequencies for the UK and NATO military traffic fill a large section followed by world air frequencies.  HF listeners are covered by a large list of HF frequencies along with all the locations indicators and squawk codes in use today.  A selection of maps outline the many air routes and sectors in the UK and we even get a map showing all the UK/VHF transmitter sites. We are now about half way through the book and the rest of the publication has every single callsign, both military and civilian, that you would ever need to know.

All the information is well laid out and easy to both find and read, there is no table of contents though so you do have to flick through the book to find the section you need.    The information itself in the book is very extensive.  According to the publisher 70% of the military callsigns have been added or reconfirmed in the last 2 years and 23% were added in early 2015.  For the 2015 publication an extensive check has been made of the civil callsigns with a number being deleted or added.

The book is spiral bound with 184 pages and measure 21x15 cm.  It's a nice size to easily fit into your radio bag.  I was very impressed with this book because a large amount of this information was new to me.  I do have a number  of radio, scanning and aircraft books which do not even begin to approach the vast amount of content present here.  I would say that the military airband listener would appreciate this book more that most but it's still an important resource for the civil airband enthusiast.  Overall I have no hesitation in recommending Airwaves and Callsign 2015 for all airband listeners.

The bad news is that after being published for 42 years a decision has yet to be made whether publication will continue in 2016, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it does.

Airwaves and Callsign 2015 is published by Photavia Press and is priced at £20 (plus £2 postage).  It can be ordered from their Order Page.