Very good, Don-
You've been a good sport and held up well to a little
mainly good-natured teasing. Seems to me that most
everyone who has weighed in with comments are good
guys and well known to be contributors in some way to
ham radio. The thread probably ought to be allowed to
wind down, as you say. FB on your VE work! We need
more guys and gals willing to give back to the hobby
like that.
Everyone made good points. There is no way to force
one single phonetic alphabet on hams, and it may
never happen. Old habits die hard. Some hams were
licensed when earlier alphabets were in use. It really
is hard to make the change. I have been around long
enough myself that the old ARRL-recommended
"Adam Baker Charlie...Young Zebra" list was still in
use- in 1963. I later relearned- the Nato "Alfa Bravo...
X-ray Yankee Zulu" list- and have never regretted it.
Some of those '63 old timers used to use "Yoke" instead
of "Young" like they were supposed to (gasp!) :o)
I looked it up and "Yoke" was a holdover basically from
the WW I era of the 20th century (1914-18 or so).
As I said, old habits died hard, even back in the
'sizzling sixties'. :o)
Indeed, a mix of older and newer alphabets often
creeps into daily conversation. I personally have had
problems getting my call across in difficult DXing
situations because some of the old timers overseas
hear "Nancy" when I say "Yankee". "Nancy" is of course
found in the older phonetics list in my 63 ARRL Handbook
(Chapter 24, Operating..., p. 577). This would happen
less often if everybody was reading from the same page.
Well, no big deal- in that case, I simply switch over to
"Yokohama" and that usually does the trick.
Or perhaps I could holler "Yaesu" instead. And be more
on topic. :o) I can tell you that it is indeed the case
that commercial aviation worldwide has settled on the
Nato phonetics, for whatever the reason.
Despite doing a lot of hard work to try to pick a better
call to replace K3YGU, my old call, K3KY, though much
better, is far from perfect. You can read a more detailed
discussion of some of the finer points in picking 'good'
calls for CW or with 'good' phonetics here:
http://www.angelfire.com/md/k3ky/page18.html
There is also a link from that page to a good listing of
many of the codes in use around the world past and
present. This used to be a better site but is now so
loaded with extra items and javascript that it's become
rather slow-loading, but it may still be worth a visit:
http://www.nor.com.au/community/sarc/phonetic.htm
To throw in at least one Yaesu-related item, if anyone
out there has for some reason *downgraded* an
FT-1000/D by removing the BPF-1 unit, I have a spare
compartment cover to hide that big square hole.
Email me if interested. 73, David K3KY
Thats "Klondike Three Klondike Yukon"- er,
"Kilo Three Kilo Yankee" :o)
Date sent: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 16:54:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Don Putnick <don_kk6dp@yahoo.com>
To: yaesu@contesting.com
Subject: [Yaesu] Since I caused this feeding frenzy ...
> ... I'd like to propose a truce. Let's get back to Yaesu issues.
>
> Don Putnick November-Alfa-Six-Zebra ARRL VE
>
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