Often plain language is best. The special calls are for *trained* operators who recognize them quickly even buried in QRM.
Every marine or aircraft operator will tell you there's nothing more arresting than suddenly hearing SOS pounded out in Morse or Mayday on voice. Even listening to playback of a distress call makes my skin crawl. You know there someone in mortal danger at the other end of the message. But that's true only if you know what the call means. I'm deeply sorry to hear about the Amateur operators who clearly couldn't be bothered with a distress call until they were asked. They are not qualified to be Hams and should have lost their licenses. Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- Several years ago (10+) during a contest, probably phone sweepstakes, I heard a marine emergency calling and calling. I first thought it was somebody messing around, BAD IDEA. After I listened for a couple of minutes, I believed it. The contesters were ignoring it or not hearing it and I tried to talk to the guy but couldn't hear him reliably because of the contest and finally asked several times to please clear the frequency because of a marine emergency and gladly it happened. I still had trouble hearing everything he was saying and asked if anyone else had a better copy than I did. One of the big stations came on and took it over, got the information of his location and that he was dead in the water, called it in, and went back to him and told him that it had been reported and that "they" were on the way. He wasn't using SOS and do not recall if he used anything else or not as I have never heard of pan pan or QRRR until now. I am a "new" ham and it wouldn't have meant a thing to me. He was just calling for help, repeatedly, and describing his situation and requesting somebody to make a call for him. Just interesting and glad to be involved even though it was just to get somebody else to actually help him. 73, de Jim KG0KP _______________________________________________ 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
