[CQ-Contest] Where Do We Get Off Doing This?

[Ted Bryant]

Dale,

Interesting you should mention this...and use Tennessee as an example! <g>

I had the same thoughts on Friday evening while playing around in the contest.  So I decided on a
little experiment.  For a while I just said "5-9 Tennessee".  The typical response to this was
"Tennessee...Tango-November?"  Ok, I turned it around, "5-9 Tango-November" to which the typical
response was "Tango-November...Tennessee?"  Go figure!!

It did seem that in countries where English was more widely spoken, "Tennessee" was understood more
often.  And the reverse, countries where English was less widely spoken, "Tango-November" generally
worked.  Naturally, I had the fewest repeats while using the combination, "Tennessee,
Tango-November".

73, Ted W4NZ
in Tennessee, that's Tango-November



-----Original Message-----
From: cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com]On Behalf Of Dale
Martin
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 12:57 AM
To: cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Where Do We Get Off Doing This?



Stateside hams: Where do we get off giving the full names of states to DX
hams in a contest?

What makes us think that DX hams we contact know that Michigan is MI and
Missouri is MO and Mississippi is MS?

I had time to listen to a number of QSO's in pileups (more than I liked)
this weekend...as I'm sure most of us did.

I heard essentially the same refrain repeated in many of them:
"Tennessee...now that's TE, right?"  and another exchange had to be made to
clarify it for the operator.

If the stateside operator had used Tango November in the first place, some
time could have been saved on everyone's part: the stateside station, the DX
station, and the stations waiting to work the DX.

So, stateside hams, please use two letter phonetics for the state
abbreviations for our DX ham friends.

There... I feel much better now...

73,
dale, kg5u