Keith, KD1E, wrote: Hold on a second (AS) there Ron :-) My understanding is that BK, CQ and SOS are not to be sent with no space but as individual letters complete with the proper space around them. Isn't merging the BK or CQ together is just sloppy sending?
--------------------------- Ya' made me look, Keith: "SOS" is a prosign with no spaces between the letters. The general public picked up on it as three letters with a number of suggestions for what they might mean (e.g. "Save our Souls") but it has no spaces. I know that from personal experience. I've programmed too many "code wheels" for emergency transmitters and one thing the FCC engineers used to listen for when checking them was to make sure there were no spaces. You may be right about CQ and BK. I run them together but, looking at various references on the 'net, I see it both ways. Even the ARRL is starting to look a little Schizophrenic about the whole thing. Even though they've always agreed with the Commercial services that a "prosign" is sent as a single character with no spaces, they are now listing CQ as both a prosign and an abbreviation and, worse, they show it as a two-character prosign. That's a contradiction in terms! Elsewhere, the ARRL does not list it as a prosign but only as an abbreviation. One might ask what is CQ an abbreviation of? Some say it's a phonetic "seek you" but I've never heard a single plausible explanation of it as anything other than a prosign. As a Ham I heard that ES was an abbreviation for a Latin phrase, but not speaking Latin I didn't know. Then, when I studied for my Commercial Radiotelegraph license I found it listed as simply the character for the Ampersand. So what's the bottom line? To me it's that CW or Morse is a language and, like most languages it goes through a process of evolution and change according to popular usage. And those changes will probably bring anguish to the purists who remember the "old ways" just as changes in spoken and written languages of all sorts have done. Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
