[Boatanchors] Five Letter Group CW Station

[Flowertime01 at wmconnect.com]

Bill,

Among diplomats (you cannot have a copy) there are whole books.
Lets go for 000 to 999 pages and 00 to 99 lines per page. 100,000 words.

Then think six columns wide. French, English, Russian, Chinese, and two more 
of your favorite local dialects.

Think not just a word but 5 digits could be a whole address and preamble.
5 digits could be a whole sentence or paragraph.
Mr. when you read my letter to the prime miniter, I wish to insult hime with 
flavor 16.
We are outraged to level 12. Please make it translate well.

The Prime minister of Great Briton gets a letter that opens with 10 digits. 
First five is England. Second Five is PM. the letter closes with 10 digits. 
First five is US. the second five is Secretary of state. With four pages you can 
address 400 countries and most major states. one page and you name the 100 
most important people in that county or state. page 99800 99900 is the boss in 
Pakistan. 99701 99901 is the Lt govener in California. 99699 99999 is the 100th 
most important person in Anarctic. Replace the person, the diplomatic position 
remains. We can address the most important 40,000 people on the planet with 
10 digits and 4 pages of book. Another page and five digits and you can then 
address, current, elect, past or some other previous person that filled the 
postion.  

Any diplomat with a book can translate the whole letter into any of the six 
languages in his book. Some flavor of these books will let you translate 
between English, French, Spanish Chinese, Japanese to almost every written language 
on the planet.

Military's use these things to order toilet paper. You open with a five digit 
number for your unit. five digits for the supply depot. Five digits for a 
catalog, each catalog item is five digits and get you some volume. If you want 
twice that many things, then  sent the five digits twice or three times. This is 
watch post 6 to depot. paper supplies sent toilet papers. Food supplies meals 
for 20 for 30 days. bullets a lot. And rifle cleaner and patches. end of 
order.

Some guy just looks the numbers up in his book and puts the shipment together 
for the next truck going that way.

If your operating CW, you reduce the key strokes any way you can. These 
number to text books have been around almost longer than CW having started as ways 
for diplomats to facilitate trade across language problems.

You some times hear cut numbers eish5 as 12345 and tmo 4 dah's and 0 as 67890.
This will also be in groups of 5 you copy this stuff with a typewriter as

12345 67890 12345 67890 12345  12345 12345 12345 12345 67890
eish5 tmo44 eeeei shiii ttmei  4400e 4400i eish0 ttmme iiss0

second line as cut numbers.

Ten word to the line with a double space after five words.

You have some pro sign that lets you know the intro stuff has ended and the 
formal stuff follows. This is your clue to do a carriage return line feed and 
start the five letter pattern. It was usually repeated. You knew if your copy 
was right if two lines looked exactly the same. visual error correction.

If someone missed something in the supply order, tough. Order it again next 
time.

lots of this stuff is still done as RTTY. Its just every day supply orders 
and some routine coordination of stuff being shipped. We have 5 digit zip codes. 
Military units have five digit addresses. Every one in the unit is numbered. 
You mail your roster to HQ once. Boss, this is me, 7 got shot. 12 was demoted. 
22 got a day off. 23 was promoted. all else is the same, supplies arrived, we 
need, have a good day sir. 

Every so often (Post Election Day) a new book is printed and distributed. One 
day it all changes. But its all the same. Same units calling the same boss 
asking for the same supplies. There are some nice females calling numbers from 
HQ down to sub units. These are routine orders to perform daily patrols. Squad 
A needs to sweep west today and meet squad B at noon in town. Squad A needs to 
sweep east tomorrow and the day after (just to mix it up) and meet squad Z at 
the river. This stuff is just called numbers and repeated over and over. 
Think propagation problems, new guys doing copy, and uncertain ability of units to 
get a receiver listened to on time.

You almost need a good DF antenna to determine where the signals are coming 
from. Lots of time listening and a good feel for the propagation you receive 
will give you a feel for the stations over time. 

This is part of what radio is all about.

Roger Ruszkowski AI4NI