Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Where've you been? On the rig tonight, I had a QSO with Jim in Tule Lake, CA, which is a farm community in Northern California near the boarder with Oregon. Jim is a retired farmer, 63 years old and has been a ham for 49 years.

Just after that I had a QSO with Sabil in Lugansk, Ukraine.

"Rig" means "my radio station" or "my radio equipment".

A "QSO" is a conversation. These 2 QSOs were on CW, as opposed to AM, FM or SSB. CW means "continuous wave" and is the mode where we use the Morse Code. AM, FM or SSB are radiotelephone modes or "phone" modes. When one is on CW, one uses "Q signals", because Q signals are abbreviations. They are also a sort of universal language.

For example, "QTH Miami Springs" means "My location is Miami Springs". If you put a question mark behind it, as in "QTH?" you are asking, "What is your location?"

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