[Elecraft] Ham innovation (Q-signals)

[Fred Jensen]

Hmmm ... FWIW: Officially, Q-signals are in question/answer format -- 
QRP? = "Shall I decrease power?" and QRP = "Decrease power,"  or QRY? = 
"What is my turn" and QRY <digits> = "Your turn is number <digits>." 
(There's an amusing footnote to QRP ... "Aeronautical Note: Refers to 
communications."  Apparently, someone thought pilots might confuse the 
radio with the throttle?)

Being innovative, however, we hams have built Q-signals into parts of 
speech.  For example, nouns - "QRM is heavy," verbs - "Some lid is 
QRMing you," and adjectives - "High QRM level today."  We also derive 
abbreviations from them.  "You're Q-five" comes from "QSA 5" meaning the 
strength of your signals is five (on a scale of 1 - 5)."  Sometimes, we 
just change the meaning.  Most of us would interpret QRX as "Stand by." 
    Officially, it means QRX? = "When will you call me again?" and QRX 
<t> <f> = "I will call you again at <t>(hours) on <f> KHz."  And of 
course, we invent them -- QST is not defined internationally.  As parts 
of speech, phone would seem to be an OK place for the familiar ones, at 
least.

In high school, I worked for a year at a shore station in So. Cal.  I 
built a predecessor of the TO-Keyer (9 or 10 dual triodes), and began 
using it on my watches instead of my bug.  I got a lot of verbal and 
some physical abuse from my colleagues for the device (they kind of 
enjoyed knocking the kid around anyway), and word must have gotten out 
because a number of our regular customers afloat began giving me "QSD."

You can download a comprehensive list of Q-signals from the web site of 
the Wilderness Emergency Medical Services Institute. Some are somewhat 
quaint.  I'm not sure when the "?" character entered Morse usage ... in 
1956 in commercial practice, IMI [di di dah dah di dit] was the prosign 
for "repeat" or "I repeat," and still is.  Questions were formed by 
preceding the Q-signals with the interrogatory prosign, INT [di di dah 
dit dah].  Don't hear that on the ham bands, however.

There's another set of Z-signals which arose first in commercial 
wireline service and then in the military, and which are used primarily 
on land-line teletype (and now data) channels.  They don't all follow 
the question/answer format, and I only remember a few:

ZUI: Your attention is invited to ...
ZAA: You are not observing proper circuit discipline.
ZAB: You're speed key is improperly adjusted (one of my favorites)
ZAN: We can receive absolutely nothing.

and a few others.  I've never heard them used on the radio.

As I said, FWIW --

Fred K6DGW
Auburn CA CM98lw


Larry Phipps wrote:
> Hi Dan, didn't know you were an Elecrafter ;-) I think Q signals are OK 
> on phone. If the uninitiated don't know what they mean, they'll either 
> learn it or remain in the dark. Let's challenge them to learn the 
> codes... it won't hurt them, and maybe eventually they will become 
> curious about cw (or PSK/RTTY for that matter).
> 
> I think they all know QST, QTH, etc. anyway, and if they read QST or the 
> handbook, they are exposed to a lot more of them.
> 
> Larry N8LP