[CW] @ in Morse

David Toepfer [email protected]
Thu, 25 Sep 2003 21:10:58 -0700 (PDT)


Yes, I have heard of this std.  And accepted standards are good and useful for
understanding.  But if one is looking for suggestions of "a better way", then I
might suggest:

(a) looks like a circle around an a (like an @)
      __ __
(a) = KNAKK

___ . ___ ___ .   . ___   ___ . ___ ___ . ___

is almost half as long as

___ . ___ .   . .   . ___ .   ___ . ___ .   . ___ . .   .   ___ . . . . ___   .
___

Any thoughts?

dt
.

--- "David J. Ring, Jr." <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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]
> 
> _______________________________________________
> CW mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/cw
> 
> _______________________________________________
> CW mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/cw
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
>                                                    --Edmund Burke
> 
> 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:
> http://www.navymars.org/northeast/index.htm
> Navy-Marine Corps MARS: Proudly Serving Those Who Serve."
> E-Mail (MARS) [email protected]
> ****************************************************************************
> ****************************
> 
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> CW mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/cw