Mangling the Phonetic Alphabet is sometimes a question of lessons learnt in order to avoid mistakes. When I activate I say Foxtrot for the F at the end of my callsign and I don’t think there are misunderstandings, but I guess it’s mainly because I’ve become quite a well known ham within the SOTA community and also because of the alerts and spots on SOTAwatch, but when I’m chasing SOTA or DX or whatever using phone, my Foxtrot is often understood as Oscar i.e. EA2IO and when signals are poor and I think I must be a weak and difficult to understand signal, I usually say Florida instead of Foxtrot and it’s better understood.
I confess I don’t like the word Foxtrot (neither the dancing). On the other hand I love the sound of the letter F in morse (dit dit dah dit)
We can’t have it all…
Cheers,
I use them both, and I’ve not been misunderstood so far. “Slash” provides a better sound picture in SSB and is easier to pronounce, but the editors of the CEPT regulations have not been SOTA activists unfortunately . . .
I was testing out VLB vertical at 1900CEST today in my sister’s garden (JN23) whilst the food was cooking. 20m seem very busy with lots of QSOs taking place and a 9K2 station with a biblical sized pileup and a ZS6 with an unduely large pileup. Neither 9K2 or ZS6 are exotic so I suppose people were glad to hear something from outside 1500km from their QTH.
That certainly appears in the Oxford English Dictionary, although I have never heard the word used to refer to a “/” symbol. In French, “virgule” means a comma, which is used in most continental European countries rather than a dot to signify a decimal point.
I have only ever heard “slant” used by American operators.
When “slash” emerged as the favoured expression at the dawn of the computer era, it caused mild amusement amongst the older generation - because when I was a schoolboy “slash” had rude connotations!
While not as official as the CEPT directive, this is a current question on the FCC Technician Class Exam (lowest level - least technical). The correct answer is “D” - all choices are correct. So no preference by the FCC.
The FCC is a bit more generous than that. They allow “portable” for "/P’.
Each indicator must be separated from the assigned call sign by a slant (“/”) or any suitable word that denotes the slant mark (“portable,” “stroke,” etc.).
And earlier in this thread that appears to be the norm in the UK.
As many of us US operators know we in the US are a bit lax about the use of /P or portable (or even using the call district when out of your call sign’s one as in W6PNG/7 if I operate in Oregon, my call indicates Call District 6 (Cal) and Oregon is in Call District 7).
The reason I asked the correct pronunciation of “/“ isn’t just about “compliance” but also to ensure that non native English chasers aren’t presented with a non standard word for “/“ and hence adding to a possibly confusing situation. M/W6PNG from a guy (i.e me) with a trace of a UK accent can be confusing and chasers might initially think I’m in Wales with a call sign MW6PNG if band conditions are rough.
Congratulations, thanks to you I now owe my employer a fair amount of my time spent youtubing Use Your Illusion and Appetite for Destruction music videos
Operating FM from Austria as OE/G4YTJ/P I initially used “stroke” between “OE” and my UK callsign, but was queried about it. The chap I was working eventually realised and asked if I meant “slash”. I used “slash” afterwards without any issue. I guess that might be anecdote rather than good data but it does seem to work.
Paul M/W6PNG,
you raise a vary valid point here. Does the STROKE even ne4ed to be pronounced? the receiving operator may record is as / but the transmitting operator shouldn’t need to state something self-evident.
You stated you’re portable, you must be /P.
I have the same issue with emails and websites *com. It’s universally understood there’s a dot preceding COM, NET, GOV, US, UK.
Victor/KI7MMZ
Yes, I understand and agree with that!
I suppose I should note I’ve NEVER seen an operator – on LOCAL communications – get lazy or sloppy. That is a bit of an annoyance. We’re always bringing new operators along so we really shouldn’t be teaching bad habits!
since i don’t have any microphone