As in “Roger Wilco”, protagonist in the Space Quest series of games. A Janitor that happens to save the world pretty often. And if the player is just a tad curious, he dies a lot, too…
Um, no. “Message received, ending communication” would be “Roger, out”. “Wilco” means more than “Message received”, and doesn’t imply the end of communication.
This has been bugging me for a while: in an earlier strip, Nick used more radio speak to describe his landing in Alaska as “five by five”. This describes the strength of a radio signal, not the quality of a landing. On the other hand, saying it was a three-point landing (the actual term for a good landing) is kind of redundant, since he’s V/STOL, and that landing was vertical.
Think the 5 x 5 thing might be a callout to his gamer geek roots. In the Starcraft RTS the terran troop transports (forget what their designation was) had a standard chatter phrase they used to acknowledge move orders that went “In the pipe, 5 x 5”
5×5 is a term used back in the day when using radio/teletype communications. You would ask the recipient how they were receiving you and they would reply with x/y. x being the readability and y being the signal strength. If they were reading you 5/5 then you had a good channel.
Nick may have also gotten it from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Faith Lehane used it to simply mean “perfect”. So when Nick said “LZ nailed. Five by five,” he may have just been saying his landing was “perfect”.
Wilco?
As in “Roger Wilco”, protagonist in the Space Quest series of games. A Janitor that happens to save the world pretty often. And if the player is just a tad curious, he dies a lot, too…
Radio speak: (I/We) will comply.
To be more accurate, it means “message received, ending communication.” Roger is the simple “understood.”
Um, no. “Message received, ending communication” would be “Roger, out”. “Wilco” means more than “Message received”, and doesn’t imply the end of communication.
Cassandra is quite correct. “Wilco” means exactly what she said it does. It is a contraction of the words “WIL(l) CO(mply)”.
This has been bugging me for a while: in an earlier strip, Nick used more radio speak to describe his landing in Alaska as “five by five”. This describes the strength of a radio signal, not the quality of a landing. On the other hand, saying it was a three-point landing (the actual term for a good landing) is kind of redundant, since he’s V/STOL, and that landing was vertical.
Think the 5 x 5 thing might be a callout to his gamer geek roots. In the Starcraft RTS the terran troop transports (forget what their designation was) had a standard chatter phrase they used to acknowledge move orders that went “In the pipe, 5 x 5”
Which, in itself, is a reference to the movie Aliens where the transport flyer said she was “In the pipe, 5×5” as they were approaching the planet.
5×5 is a term used back in the day when using radio/teletype communications. You would ask the recipient how they were receiving you and they would reply with x/y. x being the readability and y being the signal strength. If they were reading you 5/5 then you had a good channel.
Yes, I’m THAT old.
Given that this is Nick, I really think that the likeliest explanation is that he got it from Starcraft and didn’t really know what it means.
Nick may have also gotten it from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Faith Lehane used it to simply mean “perfect”. So when Nick said “LZ nailed. Five by five,” he may have just been saying his landing was “perfect”.
Neat. I never knew that.