[CW] List of prosigns

Thu Jul 25 19:01:02 EDT 2019

Have been watching this thread for a couple of days and finding it revealing and interesting.  Having been both a military cw op, then working as a federal telecoms officer for an additional 25 years, I see a number of thoughtful responses, and a  few  partial errors from members.

My first take was on the BT, AR, AA questions.  We typically used the ACP manuals used by US and most western military and governments,  including NATO, State Department, etc. 

The AA has correctly been identified as "all after".  Here is an example of that:

Classified traffic is normally taken from a code pad, after having been encoded by an operator.  Usually, the messages 

sent were in 5 letter code groups such as:      ABCDE IEPPL NMCDO ............ up to 10 groups per line, 10 lines per page.     Often there was interference, static, etc. which caused the receiving operator to miss a few character or even groups.  At this point, the receiving operator would send the other op a BK Bk, (break signal) and once the sender stopped keying and was  listening, the receiver would say AA NMCDO K , as in the above message.   The sending operator would then say :AA  NMCDO PYLCI RTHOZ...........and continue on with the message.  The given RST AND QSA reports given to the sender, by the receiver, at the beginning of the contact) would indicate to the transmitter op, as to how many groups he should send (usually 10-50 groups) before he was supposed to stop, and send "BT".  The receiver would then send "RR K" and The message would continue.  Once in a while, a new operator, would forget about the automatic stop and go signals, and just start right in, when we had given him a QSA 3, OR QRK 2 , and things would fall apart.  No way he was listening, and just continued sending, no matter the conditions.  I one had a flash message sent to us, with that happening.  His sending was OK, but conditions just were not there.  By the time he got to the end of the message, someone tore it off my MILL, and ran to the crypto room with it, and started decrypting.  Once the op stopped, I once again gave QSA  AND QRK numbers, then told him "AA ABCDE", and he did exactly the same thing, never stopping at the end of each 2 or 3 lines and continued right on to the end of the message.  I had my watch officer, senior supervisor, station manager, etc. all sitting in there by then, all trying to copy him.  Before the end of the second transmission, I was told to give him a standby , as they had already managed to break his copy back to the original message, and further confirmation of receipt of the message.  I gave him the "R QSL NR 0002 (whatever it was), and he gave me an R AR),  End of communication.  This was not a common occurrence, if someone jumped the gun.  The pro signs and standards of operation were great, for getting the message through.

As an additional fun fact: Our area chief got bent out of shape at my station chief and asked him"  Why in hell did you have a first term operator sitting to take that message/"  My chief sent one sentence back:  "Our first term operator copies at 50wpm, if you have better, send ."   It followed me though, as I was the last of my class to make GS9, thus slowing my career, right thru GS13,  SIGH!

I wound up, though, being on our last official CW net, before the complete conversion to RTTY operations, then manually tracking Satty signals from horizon to horizon, (75 Baud rates),  using Multiple channel HF units, being senior computer supervisor, helping start the first intra-net, (our own internet- at 9.6 baud rates- HI), and finally satellite supervisor, and retired when they told me I either had to go back overseas or move to Washingtond DC.  BYYYYYEEEE

Ex WN5QMX,WA5UKR,ET2US,ET3USA,SV0WPP,VS6DD,N7DC/YV5/G5CTB
QSL Bureau, DIRECT, LOTW Preferred, eQSL used but upload at a courtesy only, as do not use the system for awards.

> On July 25, 2019 at 5:25 PM "D.J.J. Ring, Jr." <n1ea at arrl.net> wrote:
> 
>     Often TTT and XXX were sent in the last 10 seconds of the silent periods, especially XXX to attract additional attention.
> 
>     On 5-ton (500 kHz) you usually had quite an audience.
> 
>     73
> 
>     DR
> 
>     On Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 17:06 Richard Knoppow < 1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com mailto:1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com > wrote:
> 
>         ?space?--    Well, write about the ROs on the Suez, it sounds like an
interesting story.
     I read somewhere that the method of using TTT and XXX was to
send them just before a silent period to alert operators to
listen for the complete message just following the SP. At least
on 500Khz that would insure a large audience.

On 7/25/2019 1:31 PM, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:
> As many know, TTT is Safety (SECURITE)  (Notice to Mariners, Weather related,
> etc.), XXX is Urgent (PAN-PAN) both are sent as individual letters:
> TTT XXX, but SOS is sent as one group with the dashes in the O part
> elongated (by treaty) for ease in recognition.
>
> If we keep this up, we will have to discuss the Egyptian radio
> operators on the Suez, darn they were fast.
>
> 73
> DR

--
Richard Knoppow
1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com mailto:1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com
WB6KBL
______________________________________________________________
CW mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/cw
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto: CW at mailman.qth.net mailto:CW at mailman.qth.net
CW List ARCHIVES: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/cw/
Unsubcribe send email to
cw-unsubscribe at mailman.qth.net mailto:cw-unsubscribe at mailman.qth.net
Subscribe send email to cw-subscribe at mailman.qth.net mailto:cw-subscribe at mailman.qth.net
Support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

=30=

______________________________________________________________
CW mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/cw
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:CW at mailman.qth.net
CW List ARCHIVES: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/cw/
Unsubcribe send email to
cw-unsubscribe at mailman.qth.net
Subscribe send email to cw-subscribe at mailman.qth.net
Support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

=30=

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/cw/attachments/20190725/6de84850/attachment-0001.html>