[CQ-Contest] Phonetics and audio

[N7BF]

I'll add my observations to this discussion.

I noticed this last weekend that when saying "November Seven Bravo Foxtrot"
to the South Americans, they usually all came back saying "Norway Seven
Bravo Florida."   It may be that they have a problem saying Foxtrot.

Also, along the lines of what someone else said, I must have sat listening
for at least 3 minutes to a Japanese station calling CQ (near the end of the
contest).  He was sending a pre-recorded CQ, and whatever phonetic he was
using for the last letter of his call made absolutely no sense to me, and I
could hear him rather well.  It just came out as a word that wasn't an
English word, the way he was pronouncing it.  I finally gave up and went
S&P-ing elsewhere.  The best ones I heard from some of the
not-English-as-a-primary-language fellows were the ones that would call CQ
and then say their call using one set of phonetics, and then say their call
again using another set of phonetics.  If you didn't get it the first time,
the second time would usually straighten you out.

Now that I mentioned pre-recorded audio, some of the people need to hear
what they sound like with their transmit volume turned up so loud and the
compression on full blast, and then they pump a pre-recorded wave file into
their transmitter that probably already has compression on it.  Most of
these sounded horrible even when they went live.  You can hardly understand
what they're saying and they're S9+ into my receiver.  They were also MUCH
wider in bandwidth than everyone else.  I wasn't running wave files but I
sure hope I didn't sound like that.  I was thinking of recording some of
these people and e-mailing them a wave file of what they sounded like.
Don't know if it'd be worth it or not.  They'd probably just get upset at me
and say the distortion was all the fault of my receiver.

Just my 2-cents worth.

Alan - N7BF