I was flying an Army C-12 in Northern California one night listening to the VHF side of a converstion between ATC and an Air Force tanker. It sounded so good we tuned up UHF to get both sides. What we finally heard from the tanker was they'd like to go to a certain point in space and it was defined as, "...xx miles off of the ABC VOR 3-8-0 degree radial." If that wasn't bad enough, the control responed in kind and gave them the clearance. After 15-30 seconds of silence, I couldn't stand it and had to ask if that equated to the 020 degree radial. No response. Maybe I missed something in ground school?!