Five by Five?

[Wh1ppet]

I realize the way terms are used can change over time and the game takes place in the future, but I keep hearing them spouting out, This 5x5, and that 5x5, the most common being the pilot on the way to a mission saying, "I'm in the pipe, five by five" and none of them strike me as a proper use of the term... It's not a military term about mission status, which is what it seems the script writer keeps using it as, but rather, it's a term used by radio operators, and since there is a LOT of radio operation, there is a little bleed over into use by military, usually with the line, "I'm reading you five by five." which means, "Your signal is coming through perfectly." Five by Five is a term used to describe the best possible signal between a transmitter and a reciever and in laymens terms is made by taking the score of 5 on two different 1 to 5 scaled readings in radio operation where one basically describes the signal strength and the second describes the signal clarity, with 5 by 5 meaning a signal is coming through full strength with no interference.

I took the time to do a little research on this to make sure there aren't other meanings for this but I'm not finding them... Any slang terms I've found relate to the idea of a message being received clearly, even when used outside of radio operation, and not getting how I'm supposed to be interpretting the way it keeps getting used in the game.

[Incunabulum]

Originally posted by Rumpl4:

I work in comms and as the OP says 5 by 5 is the best possible result of 25 outcomes to do with quality of communications, specifically S/N

which makes me think, in the year 2035 or whatever it is, who the f**k would be using analogue? scrambling, encrypting and hiding digital is so much simpler and easier than analouge and in a world where everyone uses digital, an analogue signal bouncing around is like putting a massive red x on your location

All that asside "we're in the pipe, 5x5" is a homage to the female dropship pilot in Aliens

basically it means, squad ready, comms confirmed, time to bring the rain

You work in comms, so you know that

a) Digital signals degrade and can be interfered with. While any particular bit may be lost, you can still receive garbled signals so its not a 'receive perfectly or not at all' thing. 'Clear signal, strong signal' is still applicable.

b) Digital is not magic. A single frequency digital signal is just as detectable and subject to DF as an analog one. *Frequency hopping* - which is not a digital only technology - is what spreads your signal across frequencies and makes it difficult/impossible for a listener to to detect the signal amongst the noise among multiple frequencies.

[Malidictus]

The soldiers use a lot of lingo picked up from movies and pop culture. The most common is 10-4, which I'm led to understand is typically used by civilian police. Then again, they also yell "Hack the planet!" so I'm not sure soldier coms are very strictly regimented. It might also depend on the "attitude" of a soldier, since their voice lines do change.

[Danteet]

Im in the military and I hear pilots say this all the time. They say it to mean something is perfect i.e a flight path or approach to land. Mostly used around naval vessels.

[BlackAlpha]

To understand what "in the pipe" means, it's important you know the context, the rest of the dialogue...

(The dropship in space is about to perform an atmospheric entry to land on a planet.)
Pilot: "Switch to DCS ranging."
(The HUD in the cockpit changes display.)
Co-Pilot: "2-4-0. Nominal to profile."
Pilot: "We're in the pipe, 5 by 5."

Here's what the Aliens game from 1986 thought it meant:

"Switching to DCS Ranging allows you to pilot the dropship through a series of rings attempting to stay profile compliance"
- Somebody's review of the game: http://www.therobotspajamas.com/remember-this-aliens-for-commodore-64/


"When the HEADS-UP DISPLAY says 'SWITCHING TO DCS
RANGING,' navigate the ship into the center of the PIPE, using
your joystick."
- Game manual: https://archive.org/stream/Aliens_1986_Activision/Aliens_1986_Activision_djvu.txt

A picture of the "pipe" can be seen on page 8 of the manual:
http://gamesdbase.com/Media/SYSTEM/Commodore_64/Manual/formated/Aliens-_The_Computer_Game_-_1987_-_Electric_Dreams_Software.pdf


So, it looks like the pipe are a series of waypoints that the dropship must follow for a successful landing on the planet, and (in this context) 5 by 5 is a general way of saying that everything is looking good (as already explained by other people).

This can pretty much translate to modern day ILS instruments. The pipe would be the glide path the ILS tells the pilot to follow for a successful landing. Look at the ones that have a circle in the middle to easily picture what they mean with the pipe (the lines must meet in the circle for a successful landing):
https://www.google.com/search?q=ils+instrument&espv=2&biw=1745&bih=868&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQ7LjGxvzKAhWBhQ8KHfCAC5EQ_AUIBigB

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by BlackAlpha:

This can pretty much translate to modern day ILS instruments. The pipe would be the glide path the ILS tells the pilot to follow for a successful landing.

An airship dropping into a planet's atmosphere from an orbiting aircraft would actually behave more along the rules of atmospheric re-entry than in the sense of a glide slope. As I understand it, you want a particular flight path which strikes a balance between steep enough to burn your craft up in the atmosphere and shallow enough to shoot you back up into space. That obviously depends on orbital velocity, but the planet in Aliens is very Earth-like so it would suggest Earth-like orbiting velocity and atmospheric density. So yeah - their craft could very much burn up and break up. They never seem to address this directly, but that's what I assumed the "pipe" was modelling.

[BlackAlpha]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

Originally posted by BlackAlpha:

This can pretty much translate to modern day ILS instruments. The pipe would be the glide path the ILS tells the pilot to follow for a successful landing.

An airship dropping into a planet's atmosphere from an orbiting aircraft would actually behave more along the rules of atmospheric re-entry than in the sense of a glide slope. As I understand it, you want a particular flight path which strikes a balance between steep enough to burn your craft up in the atmosphere and shallow enough to shoot you back up into space. That obviously depends on orbital velocity, but the planet in Aliens is very Earth-like so it would suggest Earth-like orbiting velocity and atmospheric density. So yeah - their craft could very much burn up and break up. They never seem to address this directly, but that's what I assumed the "pipe" was modelling.

Yes, but it's logical to conclude that dropship pilots have inherited words from regular aircraft pilots. So, a pipe in the case of the dropship is not a static glide path but one that moves around and in which the pilot might have to perform a series of different maneuvers to get to the desired destination.

[Lord Hyperlord]

@OP: Thanks for radio operator background information!

I haven't watched any of that Alien movie so I've asked myself a similar question.

[MinionJoe]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_by_five

[BlackAlpha]

Originally posted by Lord Hyperlord:

@OP: Thanks for radio operator background information!

I haven't watched any of that Alien movie so I've asked myself a similar question.

Go watch Alien, then go watch Aliens. After that, pretend the other Alien movies don't exist because they are trash. Instead, go watch Prometheus, which is sort of like a prequel to Alien (set in the same universe but in an earlier time period).

[Nebohtes]

This has been a favorite line of mine since the first time seeing Aliens (and at every opportunity, I've opted to be the drop-ship pilot). In the pipe means on course, on mission, or at expected location and time. 5x5 is archaic communications report, meaning "receiving loud and clear," but was a scale for communication clarity and signal strength measured from 1 to 5. When everything looks good, things are going as planned, and comms are loud and and clear, you're in the pipe, 5x5. I throw the horns up every time I hear it.