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
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