ProWords for Ham Radio

Ham radio ProWords are very useful for exchanging information in a quick and efficient way. Unfortunately there are variations such as with the ProWord "BREAK". In most of northern Utah, BREAK means that there will be a pause in your transmission followed by more information. In southern Utah (starting in Provo) "BREAK" means "EMERGENCY". In some other states, "BREAK, BREAK" means emergency and if a few places the emergency call is "BREAK, BREAK, BREAK". In Provo, using "break" to mean that you want to join the conversation will get you chewed out for making a fake emergency call. I don't know why we don't just all standardize on "EMERGENCY" to mean "emergency" and get rid of the confusion.

On repeaters, if you are available for a conversation (QSO) then you simply say "This Is" followed by your call sign followed by "MONITORING" or "LISTENING". On HF we call "CQ" three or more times followed by our call sign in order to stretch out the information so as to have a better chance of being heard by someone who is turning the tuning control looking for a CQ call. On a repeater, you are on a fixed frequency and there are either people on that frequency or not. No long drawn out call is needed to get their attention, hence the much shorter "MONITORING" or "LISTENING".

There are other ProWords that are peculiar to SKYWARN, SAR (Search And Rescue), CAP (Civil Air Patrol) and the Salvation Army net known as SATERN. You can find all of these using Google.

For a treat not even related to ham radio, check out the very last URL link given below. Also, be sure to check out HAM RADIO ON YOUR PC, by HamSphere, which is the next to last URL link given.

Q Codes
http://www.qsl.net/w5www/qcode.html

Ashland CERT ProWords
http://sites.google.com/site/ashlandcert/Home/ham-radio-communications/prowords

Wake County ARES - Standardized ProWords
http://www.wakeares.org/?page_id=38

WikiPedia - Procedure Word
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedure_word

WikiPedia 10 Codes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten-code

Ten-codes are generally avoided in services such as amateur radio where other existing standards (Q code and prosigns for Morse code) are already long established. Aviation and marine radio is better served by Q-codes, as the ten-code phrase lists were designed primarily for local police tasks while Q-code provides specific abbreviations for concepts related to aviation, shipping, RTTY, radiotelegraph and amateur radio. In radiotelegraph operation, a Q code is often shorter (as ten-codes require transmission of three prefix characters: 1, 0, hyphen) and provides standardization of codes, essential in international and shortwave communication.

Wikipedia - Prosigns for Morse code
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code

Wikipedia - Morse code mnemonics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code_mnemonics
Scroll down and see the morse chart (Visual Mnemonic), it is the most original morse chart I have EVER seen.

Lots of general and useful ham radio information
http://www.oharts.org/

THE SALVATION ARMY TEAM EMERGENCY RADIO NETWORK - SATERN
http://www.satern.org/ecom.html
http://www.satern.org/

Another ProWord List
http://www.qsl.net/k/kf4uel//lingo.htm

Ham Radio in your PC
http://www.hamsphere.com/?gclid=CJDd7urRiKQCFRhaiAodejOjHw

And now for something completely different
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39100951/displaymode/1247/?beginSlide=1

73 de N7OZH until next time.