NUMERAL PENNANTS AND SUBSTITUTES

how to fly the same flag twice in one group with only one set aboard

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Formats: A4 · A3 · A2
What you get: Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject: signals · everyone · reference · study

A set of the Code is 26 alphabet flags, 10 numeral pennants, 3 substitutes and the answering pennant. NGA Pub. 102 (1969, rev. 2020), pp. 2, 4, 8, 9, 18. Checked 2026-08-27.

A SUBSTITUTE LOOKS ONLY AT ITS OWN KIND

In the group “L 2330” the second substitute hangs fourth, yet it repeats neither the fourth nor the second flag of the group. What is above it is a numeral pennant, so it counts only the numerals: the second from the top is a three, and a three is what it says.

The same piece of cloth under an alphabet flag would mean the second letter. What it says is decided not by itself but by what flies above it.

On the sheet

A set of the Code is 26 alphabet flags, 10 numeral pennants, 3 substitutes and the answering pennant. NGA Pub. 102 (1969, rev. 2020), pp. 2, 4, 8, 9, 18. Checked 2026-08-27.
Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 11 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

NUMERAL PENNANTS AND SUBSTITUTES

A SUBSTITUTE LOOKS ONLY AT ITS OWN KIND

On the sheet

Printing

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