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[CQ-Contest] HA: To cut or not to cut?

To: <cq-contest@contesting.com>
Subject: [CQ-Contest] HA: To cut or not to cut?
From: "Vladimir Sidarau" <vs_otw@rogers.com>
Date: Thu, 31 May 2012 11:21:50 -0400
List-post: <cq-contest@contesting.com">mailto:cq-contest@contesting.com>
Cut numbers in Europe and NA are totally different animals. Widely used in
Europe, cut numbers are rather a headache if used in NA. 

A or (even worse) E as cut numbers mostly cause troubles or at least force a
recipient to slow down and double decode the code received.

N and T are a great tool to distinguish 9 from 0 if signals are weak. If you
send 469 but you are asked for refill time by time sending you back like,
46?, a single 46N (sent by a paddle) works in one go. But still, it works
better if your counterpart is located in Europe...

73,

Vladimir VE3IAE

--- 

-----Исходное сообщение-----
От: cq-contest-bounces@contesting.com
[mailto:cq-contest-bounces@contesting.com] От имени Pete Smith N4ZR
Отправлено: May-31-12 8:23 AM
Кому: CQ Contest
Тема: [CQ-Contest] To cut or not to cut?

There's nothing like a CW serial number contest to get you re-thinking about
the use of cut numbers.

For situations where first-time intelligibility is important, I think use of
cut numbers probably costs more time than it saves.  Here's why:

The basic Morse Code 0-9 character set has two important characteristics
- each number is five code elements long, and each one gives you two chances
to copy correctly or confirm that you have done so. If you hear the first
dit of 1, or the last 4 dahs, then you know what the number is.  This is
because, with the regularity of computer-sent CW and the presence of "5NN"
as a signal to expect the number to begin at a certain time, you can often
infer from the length of the "lost" portion of a number what it must have
been.  Even if you only get the two dits of 8, depending on when you hear
them, you can have pretty good confidence that it was, in fact, 8, and not
seven with one unheard dit.

How much time is saved by sending A instead of 1?  How much time is lost by
responding to "AGN" or "NR?"

Opinions?  I bet there are a few out there.

--
73, Pete N4ZR
The World Contest Station Database, updated daily at www.conteststations.com
The Reverse Beacon Network at http://reversebeacon.net, blog at
reversebeacon.blogspot.com, spots at telnet.reversebeacon.net, port 7000 and
arcluster.reversebeacon.net, port 7000

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