{"id":2962,"date":"2013-11-15T17:32:15","date_gmt":"2013-11-15T17:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/w2pa.net\/HRH\/?p=2962"},"modified":"2021-06-02T22:16:57","modified_gmt":"2021-06-02T22:16:57","slug":"call-and-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/w2pa.net\/HRH\/call-and-card\/","title":{"rendered":"Call and Card"},"content":{"rendered":"

CQ,<\/em> usesd as a general call for initiating a contact, took time to become an acceptable practice in the early years. Serious operators frowned on its use, mostly because it had been used to excess in the old days among the \u201clittle boys with squeak boxes<\/a>,\u201d usually in exceedingly long and sparsely identified calls.<\/p>\n

\"QST

Cartoon from July 1925 QST<\/p><\/div>\n

In March 1921, QST<\/i> announced an operating event called the \u201cARRL CQ Party,\u201d to be run on April Fools Day.1<\/a><\/sup> The writer (unnamed) asserted that CQ meant that \u201csome bird is causing unnecessary QRM,\u201d and that the ARRL Operating Department had \u201cdeclared war on \u2018CQ\u2019 as an outgrown antique.\u201d Beginning at midnight, participants were to call CQ with high power and \u201cany old speed\u201d according to a schedule that allocated a 3-minute time slot to each call district. Thus everyone who was not transmitting could see how many districts they could hear, which might actually be useful. This would end at 12:30 a.m. when all stations in all districts would call simultaneously, nonsensical by design. \u201cMaybe Mars will hear us,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

The party really did run and was enjoyed for the farce it was. \u201cThere were almost as many \u2018HI\u2019s floating around as there were CQs showing that most of the gang appreciated the spirit of the thing,\u201d noted ARRL secretary Kenneth Warner.2<\/a><\/sup> But its other purpose was to discourage calling CQ during relay schedules, and to \u201cto show up the foolishness of the unholy amount of CQ-ing that has gone on every night all over the country, causing untold interference that is so unnecessary. Persistent CQ-ing is nothing less than a bad habit, accomplishes nothing good whatever, and merely breaks up communication in nearby states,\u201d scolded Warner.<\/p>\n

CQ had its origin in maritime wireless, used by ships seeking nearby stations to which they could pass messages. So, although calling CQ was labeled \u201ca nuisance\u201d by Warner, he also allowed that it might still have a legitimate, similar use in traffic handling.3<\/a><\/sup> Nevertheless, interminably long CQs with hardly a call sign mentioned were bad form and just caused QRM, he cautioned.<\/p>\n

Over the next two years, either attitudes and behavior had changed, or the use of CQ became too pervasive to do anything about, or both. In late 1923, Warner wrote yet again about the practice, calling it \u201ca great evil in amateur radio today.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup> But he equivocated, admitting that there were amateurs on both sides of the issue\u2014those who use CQ all the time and those who believe that its use is cause for license revocation\u2014and that neither was right.<\/p>\n

He cited cases where it had value: briefly announcing one\u2019s presence on the air, and directional calls for a particular region with the intention of sending traffic. The abuse<\/em> of CQ was the problem. Some amateurs would call long CQs just to get listeners to send a reception report card. This, he asserted, was \u201cunjustified abuse of the ether.\u201d (One wonders if there was such a thing as justified<\/i> abuse of the ether.) But long CQs, in hopes of starting a QSO, were also nonsensical, argued Warner, since they often had the opposite effect, and \u201cgood amateurs refuse to answer the long drawn-out CQ of an ether-mutilator, and oftener than not nobody will stay with you while you consume ten minutes calling\u2014there is too much on the air that is interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

A good example of proper CQing was 6ZZ, who was considered a gateway<\/em> station, key in connecting regions for relaying message traffic. It therefore made sense for him to announce when he was available. He used a single CQ and a single call for such an announcement, and then would stand by for fifteen seconds before trying again. \u201cLet’s be more reasonable about this thing, fellows, and stop abusing CQ,\u201d implored Warner.<\/p>\n

F. M. Keefe, aboard the S.S. Tomalva in Rotterdam, wrote with humor to add his own voice to the complaints about never-ending CQs.5<\/a><\/sup> He regularly spent time trying to copy calls so that he could contribute to the Calls Heard<\/em> section of QST<\/i>. But he had finally had enough:<\/p>\n

\u2026 after straining my ears, patience, and vocabulary t\u2019other night while following an Endless Chain of See Kews that never signed, or faded just before the psychological moment, I decided that things ain\u2019t what they used to be. Having cast my decision, I proceeded to cast the remains of the Remington6<\/a><\/sup> <\/b>at the ship\u2019s cat, (don\u2019t possess a Corona as per 6ZZ). Missed the cat and hit the 3rd mate on the knee and he QSL\u2019d with a right hook to the jaw that would have done credit to Jack Dollarksy himself. He has no sense of humor, I guess, \u2018cause how was I to know it was his lap the cat was sleeping on? But that’s a different story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Keefe, ships in the Atlantic had less time to listen the further east they sailed, due to the time difference and the ever earlier dawn. Thus his frustration arose from wasting his precious listening time on CQ callers. He endorsed the idea that stations using long CQs should never be cited in Calls Heard<\/i> to discourage their \u201cceaseless, senseless, endless CQ-ing.\u201d<\/p>\n

While some amateurs continued to shun its use and actively avoided answering stations calling CQ, others saw that it had a valid purpose. Traffic Manager Fred Schnell set out to establish guidelines for its use as a \u201cstandard ARRL practice\u201d in early 1924.7<\/a><\/sup> His concept still focused on handling message traffic rather than its present day use as a general call for a QSO. Its purpose, he stated, was to \u201cindicate that a station wishes to communicate with another station\u2026\u201d meaning, \u201cthe calling station has traffic for some other station.\u201d However, he facetiously acknowledged that in typical amateur radio use, \u201cCQ has had a meaning which goes something like this: \u2018I want some DX cards (which will never be QSL\u2019d); will somebody please answer who is at a distance greater than 2,000 miles so I can tell him nil hr drp crd cul 73 gn<\/i>.\u20198<\/a><\/sup> It has degenerated into the call of the DX-Card Hound who seldom acknowledges receipt of a report card.\u201d9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

The guidelines Schnell set forth had mostly to do with timing\u2014never call CQ too long, listen for at least five minutes before calling, and do not call CQ more than once or twice in fifteen minutes. Three CQs and three call signs was the standard format he suggested. And it was to be used to announce that you were ready to receive traffic. If you had traffic to clear you should first listen for a station already on the air located closer to the message\u2019s destination.\u00a0 If none was heard, a directional CQ was called for, as in \u201cCQ north\u201d or \u201cCQ Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BT<\/p>\n

From the earliest days, hams used postcards to send reception reports to fellow amateurs. Two-way contacts were not always possible and this was one way to let station operators know their transmitters were being heard. The reverse case also happened. An operator who saw his station\u2019s call sign listed in the Calls Heard<\/i> section of QST<\/i> would send a card to the listed receiving station inquiring about its receiving setup. In both cases a reply was expected but not nearly often enough sent. Unanswered QSLs was a frequent complaint even back then.<\/p>\n

The practice of sending reports by postcard dates back at least as early as 1916 when first mentioned by Edward Andrews, 3TQ, in a letter to QST<\/i>. Andrews wrote how very valuable a reception report by postcard really was,10<\/a><\/sup> and commented that he had never seen it mentioned in QST<\/i>. In agreement, the editor suggested this was a great way to keep amateurs in touch with each other and better understand the range of their signals.<\/p>\n

Carl D. (Don) Hoffman, 8UX, had been drawing cartoons for QST<\/i> since the fourth issue when he signed 8ADU, his pre-war call.11<\/a><\/sup> In between, Hoffman served in the Military Intelligence Service, Radio division. He had set out to be a cartoonist and attended an art school for a while before quitting to open a radio store, then sold it to work for the Republic Electric Company. He was also the editor of a radio column in the Akron, Ohio newspaper.<\/p>\n

\"QSTHoffman wrote a letter, published in the August 1919 issue of QST<\/i>, that mentioned \u201cusing post cards to let the other fellow know you heard his signals.\u201d Despite the 1916 letter from 3TQ, QST<\/i> credited Hoffman with originating the post card QSL idea.12<\/a><\/sup> He had also suggested what information a report form should contain. Hoffman had been sending such cards before the war (perhaps that’s really why he got the credit, not his 1919 letter) and received many thanks from hams whose stations he heard. As \u201cinventor\u201d of the QSL card, although it was not yet called that, \u201cThis letter was the beginning of the idea that has,\u201d by early 1924, \u201cdeveloped to the point where every amateur station has its walls filled with these printed post cards,\u201d wrote the editor.<\/p>\n

The attribution stuck, and in September, Howard S. Pyle, 8ST, wrote about standards for Amateur DX Report Cards<\/i>, which he called \u201cthe international fad that 8UX started.\u201d13<\/a><\/sup> Pyle argued that the only basic pieces of information that really should appear on cards were the call sign and address of the sender, the time and date of the received transmission or QSO, and \u201cpossibly also the wavelength.\u201d Furthermore, he asserted that information about antennas and equipment was superfluous. And besides, it was better to leave blanks for such things since they changed so frequently.<\/p>\n

Clearly a minimalist, fancy design was something Pyle just could not fathom or tolerate. He criticized the use of pale colors, pointing out that they do not photograph well in (black and white printed) magazines. And using lots of colors and flourishes was best left to those with some actual artistic talent, lest you \u201cmake yourself and your station ridiculous to the fraternity.\u201d Besides, single color cards were less costly, too.<\/p>\n

Lastly, he criticized \u201cnear-funny\u201d cards, writing that, \u201cthere are actual born humorists in the world but judging from the cards [that he had seen], there are surprisingly few in the amateur fraternity while the efforts of the would-be\u2019s are rather disgusting. Avoid cheapening your card by a display of vaudeville humor\u201d (whereas cheapening its appearance by using all one color was apparently fine).<\/p>\n

Bah, humbug, he didn\u2019t add.<\/p>\n

\"AR<\/p>\n

de W2PA<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
    \n
  1. \u201cA.R.R.L. CQ Party, April 1st,\u201d QST<\/i>, March 1921, 22. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. \u201cThe CQ Party,\u201d Editorial, QST<\/i>, May 1921, 28. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  3. \u201cA Nuisance,\u201d Editorial, QST<\/i>, December 1922, 42. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  4. \u201cDah-Dit-Dah-Dit Dah-Dah-Dit-Dah,\u201d Editorial, QST<\/i>, November 1923, 34. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  5. \u201cAmen, Brother,\u2014Amen!,\u201d Radio Communications by the Amateurs, QST<\/i>, November 1923, 50. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  6. A typewriter. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  7. F. H. Schnell, \u201cHow to Use CQ,\u201d QST<\/i>, May 1924, 20. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  8. Meaning “nothing more here, drop me a card, see you later, 73, good night.” ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  9. The most common practice was to send a card to a station to report hearing it, and to expect the owner of that station to acknowledge, or QSL<\/i> your report. See the next section on QSLs<\/del> cards<\/ins>. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  10. E. A. Andrews, \u201cQSL,\u201d Radio Communications by the Amateurs, QST<\/i>, June 1916, 142. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  11. Who\u2019s Who in Amateur Wireless, QST<\/i>, February 1924, 57. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  12. \u201cFrom QST\u2019s Cartoonist, 8ADU,\u201d Radio Communications by the Amateurs, QST<\/i>, August 1919, 29. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  13. H. S. Pyle, “The Amateur DX Report Card,” QST<\/em>, September 1924, 36. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    CQ, usesd as a general call for initiating a contact, took time to become an acceptable practice in the early years. Serious operators frowned on its use, mostly because it had been used to excess in the old days among the \u201clittle boys with squeak boxes,\u201d usually in exceedingly long and sparsely identified calls. In March 1921, QST announced an operating event called the \u201cARRL CQ Party,\u201d to be run on April Fools Day.1 The writer (unnamed) asserted that CQ … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[299,301,225,144,298,300,266,302,157,303,20],"class_list":["post-2962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-3tq","tag-8st","tag-8ux","tag-calls-heard","tag-cq","tag-don-hoffman","tag-fred-schnell","tag-howard-pyle","tag-kenneth-warner","tag-qsl-cards","tag-squeak-box"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w2pa.net\/HRH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2962"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w2pa.net\/HRH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w2pa.net\/HRH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w2pa.net\/HRH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w2pa.net\/HRH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2962"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"http:\/\/w2pa.net\/HRH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3478,"href":"http:\/\/w2pa.net\/HRH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2962\/revisions\/3478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w2pa.net\/HRH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w2pa.net\/HRH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w2pa.net\/HRH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}