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

[John G.]

It seems that T and N work as cut numbers in NA as most contesters here are 
familiar with those cuts, A a little less familiar.  The others would 
probably baffle almost all NA ops.

73 John AF5CC

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Vladimir Sidarau" <vs_otw at rogers.com>
To: <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2012 3:21 PM
Subject: [CQ-Contest] HA: To cut or not to cut?


> 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 at contesting.com
> [mailto:cq-contest-bounces at 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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