QST de N7GMT

Well, they got after me and wouldn’t let me participate passively tonight for the local Morse code practice session. They teased and cajoled and mocked and brow-beat and … well, actually they just gave me a bit of a bad time.

You know, we’re not going to take your excuses of “Oh, I can’t find my paddles.” for very much longer. You can’t keep saying “I still need to get the wiring fixed.” or “I need to find that adapter.” And we’re all not-very-good, so you can’t use that excuse at all. You’re going to have to just jump in, so I’ll start and hand it over to Chris, and Chris will hand it over to you, then you hand it back to me, and we’ll just keep going until we’re done. [Did you see how smoothly he did that?] Now QSY down to frequency …

And that was that.

I really haven’t been able to find my paddles. I had to resort to using the Up/Dn buttons on the microphone of my IC-706MkIIG—which does not do iambic keying, might I just add! Oh, it will send a series of dahs or a series of dits but it won’t do the nice dah-di-dah-dit required to send C without you bouncing all over the top of the mic. <sheesh>

[After further testing, it turns out as long as the dah button is down, it will only send dahs; if you hold the dit button, it will send dits … until you hold the dah button, at which point you're back to only dahs; let up on the dah side, and it will revert to doing dits again.]

Anyway, just for fun, here’s what I copied (more or less) to show you just how bad I really am at copying Morse code. (Lower-case letters are where I filled in afterwards—including what I sent, since I couldn’t very well type and key at the same time. Chewing and walking are taxing enough, thank you very much.)

In the group: AD7KG, KF7P, N7GMT:

kf7p de ad7kg k

n7gmt de kf7p k

ad7kg de n7gmt k

RR K P DO AH TRENT K

RR KD7FP KN DOO NEW S TH M C HEAR OTH TOF O . KF7P DE AD7KG

RR Y CAN H R OTH == T Y WaTTs == G D O PraCTICE C TONI E AR N7GMT DE KF7P K

kf7p de n7gmt = oh boy but i am rusty = i am running about 40 watts = ad7kg de n7gmt k

RR N7GMT DE AD7KG ... IM ruNNING 50 WATTS = S TO WK SO I E AV T SE AT 50 = KF7P DE AD7KG K

RR OK H VE Y S EE S OK OR ALL = TRENT wHAT is YOUR qTH? O ARE U ruNNIg G 0 R5 TS ? N7GMT DE KF7P K

my qth is pleasant grove pleasant grove = the 706 does not do iambic using the mic btw = ad7kg de n7gmt k

ad7kg de n7gmt = ALL TRENT yoU SOUND a LOT bETTER tHAN I DO ON THE MiC = I HaVE neveR TRieD TO USE A MiC? KF7P DE AD7KG K

RR coPy ON ALL == THIS IS HARD N = UsiNG E C ER K Y = C RR NT MP AT MY QTH IS D EES = OVER TO N7GMT DE kf7p K

it cant be my turn already = I DONT THINK I GOT YOUR QTH JED = ad7kg de n7gmt k

N7GMT DE AD7KG QTH IS WEST JORDAN UTAH WEST JORDAN UTAH = ruNNING A Yaesu 89_ 897 = KF7P DE AD7KG K

TY FE R MT IN AND ST CTED RPT LL HIHI EA LL K N7GMT DE KF7P K

all i got was hihi and dont you mean west jordon? hihi = ad7kg de n7gmt k

RR n7gmt de ad7kg = I AM N AJ O = L M GO K TO THE 19 AD7KG SK

RR KF7P SK

dit-dit n7gmt sk

Glossary

DE

“from”, so AD7KG DE N7GMT would translate as “Attention AD7KG, here’s a message from N7GMT”

K

all by itself at the tail-end of a transmission this means “over” as in “over to you for your turn” (I think everyone gets this one, right?)

R or RR

“Roger” or “Roger-Roger”; used to indicate that you copied and understood all of the last transmission. (It does not indicate you agree with comments made.) You’ll notice AD7KG and KF7P understand everything I can manage to send; the more observant will notice I never once sent RR because … well, if you can make heads or tails out of what I copied….

AR

prosign for “end of message”

QTH

prosign or Q-signal for “current location”; as with all Q-signals can be a statement or question—QTH UTAH would be “my (current/home) location is Utah”; QTH? would be “where are you (currently) located?”

paddles

Iambic Paddles are a two-lever kind of Morse code key. If you hold one lever and you get di-di-di-di-di-dit; hold the other and you get dah-dah-dah-dah. The really cool part is holding both levers and getting di-dah-di-dah-di-dah.

SK

prosign for “Ending transmission; I’m finished; I don’t want to talk any more; I’m going to bed now.”

=

The dash (’—’) and double-dash (’=') characters are used like the word STOP in telegrams of yesteryear. They are used to break a message into chunks, roughly analogous to paragraphs or sentences.

dit-dit

This is a goofy little thing one picks up when listening to CW; it is the tail end of “dah-di-di-dah-dit, dit-dit” (say it in your head a couple of times; you’ll get it) It is sent by operators who have been listening in and want to throw in their last two bits.

Tags: cw, glossary, ic-706mkiig, keyer, mocking, paddles, practice, udxa

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