This morning, a friend wrote:
Hello fellow hams:
Last weekend I worked some DX stations in the CQ Magazine SSB DX contest. The exchange between stations comprised an RS number and a sequential number. At least half the exchanges I heard required retransmission of the latter number, such as 062. Sometimes the stations needed three tries–even with a 59 report.
Would the ham community benefit from phonetic numerals? Ideas that use city names:
- 0 – Zagreb
- 1 – Ontario
- 2 – Toronto
- 3 – Triest
- 4 – Fort Worth
- 5 – Penza
- 6 – Sikar
- 7 – Seville
- 8 – Oaxaca
- 9 – Niner (already in common use)
NATO has a set of phonetic numerals, but the words don’t exactly roll off the tongue. Nadazero, anyone?
While the idea of having better phonetics is a good one, I’m not sure how well this would work:
- Hams aren’t really used to using phonetics for numbers. I wonder how widespread the use of the NATO phonetics is in the military.
- I think the use of place names could be confusing since a) place names are often used for letters among DXers (Honolulu, Yokohama, etc) and b) several numerals start with the same letter.
What do you all think?
Fred B says
Another (good) option is to learn numbers in various languages..so can repeat
numbers in the contact’s native language ..or close one..(eg Spainish, Italian similar)
FB
ka9kqh says
I try to always use the ITU phonetics unless they just aren’t getting through and then I try alternatives. It looks like the ITU numeric phonetics contain a latinesque part and an english part. I’d be all for using that one to start out with.