[CW] @ in Morse
David J. Ring, Jr.
[email protected]
Thu, 25 Sep 2003 21:04:09 -0400
Official ITU recommendations in "Appendex B - Regulations and
Recommendations for Morse Telegraphy by sounder or aural means" cites that
the "official" way to represent the character @ in Morse Code is to send the
following characters in Morse:
CIRCLE-A
This is sent by sending C I R C L E (hyphen) A.
A great idea, and I actually used it several times - the European stations
never batted an eye.
The ONLY time I had an operator give me "I know this, but do you..." was PCH
in Holland who sent a group in a message:
__ __
1AR1BT2
Which I copied as we were taught:
__
AR is "CROSS" or +.
__
BT is "DOUBLE DASH" or "EQUALS SIGN" or =.
So I copied:
1+1=2
He belabored the point, when I actually had gotten it immediately.
The other time I ran into a "Coast Station" doing the same was when I asked
for the USA "FLODERS" or "Flower Orders" handing charges - we could ONLY do
Flower Orders or Gift Orders from the "same" company as the ship radio
station - in this case RCA. So KPH in San Francisco responded with:
__
CC (coast charge) SX 3.35 TOTAL
__
LL (land line charge) SX 0.075/WORD
__
SHIP (ship charges) SX 0.08/WORD
__
And he kept sending SX over and over with a question mark after it.
__
SX is $ - but only USA stations/ships use it.
But for gosh sakes I WAS AN USA SHIP.
Some guys just don't know quality when they hear it.
I guess there were a few REPEATS for SEMICOLON - and I have to admit I
actually appreciated THAT repeat. I had to THINK what the heck was
dah-dit-dah-dit-dah-dit.
HI HI
73
DR
1 2 3 4 (AR)
----- Original Message -----
From: Gregory W. Moore
To: David J. Ring, Jr.
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 3:13 PM
Subject: Re: [CW] @ in Morse
GA DR,
Are you talking about CIRCLE-A literally (sending the world circle hyphen
a or using SK in the middle of a sentence.
This is a real new one for me DR, my commercial days were noticiable for
the lack of "@" rmember, my pro CW days were in the 60's and early 70's,
and military at that, even though I did work a bunch of MF at NWP/NIK/NJN
and also on NMIB.
BT
OPNOTE: ALL INFORMATION REGARDING ENCRYPTION IN THIS MESSAGE IS FROM
DECLASSIFIED AND PUBLICLY PUBLISHED WEB SITES. THIS WRITER IS IN NO WAY
DISCLOSING
ANY INFORMATION WHICH WAS, IS, OR IN ANY WAY REFERRED TO IN HIS DEBRIEFING
PAPERS.
THIS FORMER NAVY RADIOMAN /CRYPTO OP/REPAIR TECH IS WELL AWARE OF THE
REQUIREMENTS AND PENALTIES REGARDING DISCLOSURE WHICH ARE ATTACHED TO HIS
CLEARANCES. END OPNOTE. YOU GUYS FROM THE MIB MAY CONTINUE TO HAVE YOUR
COFFEE.
BT
Now, remember that ALL military traffic which was sent by CW had to be
able to be encrypted. Since the device used was
a bear (ok, the outside is declassified, and you can see the "thing" at
the following URL:
http://webhome.idirect.com/~jproc/crypto/klb47.html
Now, I have many happy????? hours beating one of these things into
submission at 0 dark 30, and regardless of what you may or may not see on
the keytops, this (and related units) had one small problem, concerning the
ltr/figs/ltrs shift. Therefore, it was required of us to keep any sent
punctuation at a minimum, and spell out the punctuation, as well as
numerals. Yes, it would work, sometimes even perfectly, when fed with a
punched tape of teletype characters. More often than not, the stunt(s)
required both to encrypt and decrypt the ltrs/figs/ltrs shift wouldn't work.
>From that point on, one would be presented with garbage in the output.
I have attached a pix of the beast, which was on another site. you will
notice a character counter. This was very important, as
it was imperative to be able to go back to the last "good" character, and
experiment from there. It was occasionally necessary to run the alphabet,
doing a backup after each meaningless output, then go "figs" and run the
figs characters, until one could produce acceptable plaintext. Because of
this quirk, all Naval Messages were required, if they were going to undergo
encryption, to have all punctuation and numerals spelled out. Some commands
were more stupid in their regulation than others, for instance, one (who
shall remain nameless for their own good, as I have no wish to embarrass
the &^*%^*%^ idiots) required that one send the message with the actual
punctuation and then the punctuation spelled out. I took a long time and
a lot of diplomacy to explain to the person who had issued such an inane
order that it was not only confusing, but could cause even more garbles in
decryption. This being said, it was exceedingly common practice in that time
period, when composing tfc to use actual numerals, followed by a paren then
the numerals spelled out, followed by an unparen, and so forth. This
practice was supposed to minimize errors during transmission, both with cw
and teletype, but basically was a pain.
I have attached a copy of the last message sent by a KL-7 cypher
machine,, which happened to occur in Canada. I have no idea if there is a
similar message copy by the USN, I severly doubt it, as the secrecy
surrounding these was extremely high while I was in, as the Navy considered
these the top of the encryption heap. This is where the SPECAT stuff was
encrypted/ decrypted. As a matter of fact I was one of only 6 individuals
who had access to the space, the list being prominently posted on the
outside of the door. The units being in a separate compartment, bank vault
doors, and thermite charges mounted to reduce the whole mess to molten metal
in the event capture or compromise was imminent (I do believe that our issue
.45's were for the same purpose, on ourselves--hi--) . We (the 6 "chosen
few" }always wanted to have a rubber stamp made with the logo
"BURN BEFORE READING", but we never did--it was extremely tempting
though--hi-- Incidentally, while the security given
by this machine was, is, and will always be excellent, the reason why
these were retired was because of the wholesale sellout of the cryptography
secrets, and past, present and future keylists, by those dispicable Walker
family members. It is too bad their sentences were simply prison, because
most of us RM/Crypto guys would have liked to perform a much more permanent
sentence upon them (keelhauling the length of a carrier, after chumming for
sharks???) Works for me...
Query, is there a morse character for the "@" (CIRCLE-A) or is it
simply spelled out..
73 es tnx
GW
.-30-
David J. Ring, Jr. wrote:
As you remember from ITU books commercial operators used "CIRCLE-A" for
this.
As % was sent as 0/0 and multiplication sign was X and addition was + (AR)
and subtraction was - (hyphen).
73
DR
----- Original Message -----
From: "uranito" <[email protected]>
To: "CW REFLECTOR" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 8:26 AM
Subject: [CW] @ in Morse
Hello dear friends:
We are looking for a Morse Code @ universal format.
Our members are using ..." di da da di da "...that is from " � " in spanish.
Any help?
Muchos saludos
Best regards
Alberto U. Silva LU1DZ
(QSL Manager EA3RE)
GACW Co-ordinator
http://gacw.no-ip.org
[email protected]
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"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
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Greg Moore NNN0BVN PA
U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS)
Official Pennsylvania Area Website:
http://pages.prodigy.net/nnn0fbk/mars.htm
Official Northeast Area Website:
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