I have been asked “QLF?” A few well deserved times by friends. Actually had to send it a couple times when my keying hand became disconnected from my brain.
Mike, N4VBV
1 Like
The prosign AS is a useful tool for managing activations. Chasers seem to understand it over on this side of the Atlantic, and they “get it” from context, even if they’re not learned heard it before. It has an urgent sound if sent 2 or 3 times. Most of my chasers seem to know it.
It’s just the right tool if you drop your pen, or the log, or the antenna pole is starting to fall. Likewise if people and dogs appear close by.
AS also is just the thing to send when you’re trying to complete an S2S, and a QRO chaser - who can’t hear what is happening for whatever reason - calls right on top of everything. Send “AS AS - S2S AGN”?
Really there’s no prescribed exchange that works best to complete most S2S contacts on CW. These contacts vary considerably. You have to match the other operator, as well as other conditions that matter. What several of you have suggested is helpful. S2S contacts depend on the skill of both operators. K6EL does lots of S2S’s and so do I, but when we get each other, it’s usually a short, crisp contact. We send a fraction of what’s been suggested by some of you. If we have internet, which is more often than not, we already know the summit info, and we know our calls almost instantly, so we just need the signal reports.
S2S contacts have many variations. What you do when signals are very weak is not what you do when signals are loud and you can do the whole thing in seconds. If the pile is deep and strong, just getting the S2S started is the main challenge. The more you do S2S, the more you learn what works and what doesn’t. It’s important to remember that many of the people in a SOTA pile on another activator are the same chasers who just called you when you were calling CQ and working chasers a while ago! These guys know your habits, they have heard you do S2S hundreds of times, and many of them know you’re going to get the S2S and then get out as fast as possible. It follows that many veteran chasers are helpful, and it gets better over time! We all want to log that activator on the 10-point summit.
It gets really interesting when 3 or 4 activators are all calling S2S for the same guy on that 10-point peak. Usually we try not to interfere - that wastes time - we can each get the contact fast if we cooperate. We already have the pile quiet! Silence is golden, and there’s no reason for a long or complex S2S exchange with too many repeats.
S2S competition among 2 or 3 chasing activators can quickly turn nice - often one of us will call UP 1, and then we work each other for another S2S contact with good points!
I don’t know about other regions of the world, but here in NA most of the S2S-motivated activators are cooperative and pleasant, and this creates a nice bond.
The most difficult S2S’s are with new, slow CW operators. Sometimes these people activate high-point summits, so making the whole contact is very challenging!
- Some don’t know what S2S is.
- He or she may ignore the S2S call, because it couldn’t possibly be for them
- Sometimes they just quit for a while!
- Often they work the loud chasers instead!
- If you go faster than they can, you won’t get them - QRS is the rule - go slower than they go.
- If they’re on a “valuable” summit, they have a pile of chasers, and most of those chasers are frustrated beyond what they can stand.
- Those chasers really don’t want to wait several minutes for a difficult S2S - but most of them will - at least over here they will…
- The QRS activator is already stressed to max from the intense pile, and the S2S is not a welcome distraction…
- Since the activator has done few or no S2S’s before, he or she may not understand what to do. Usually the best approach - if the pile is quiet - is to take the lead, send slowly and carefully, usually with repeats - your call, his/her RST, and finally your summit, at least twice. Stay calm and try to be perfect. It’s better to leave out any punctuation for the summit ref, because the other activator may be confused by it.
- An important trick is to leave plenty of space between each character and the next, don’t compress or shorten anything, no cut numbers, and leave even more space between difficult groups, like the summit ref, your call, etc. Help the other guy!
- While it’s a test of patience, one of the nicest things in all of SOTA is when one of these new QRS ops (or new to SOTA) sends RRR, TU, 73, etc. after he gets the info and realizes what just happened - HE DID IT!.
If you really want to get a lot of S2S points in one session, you have to ask yourself if it’s worth the time to fight the pile, help the other operator through the exchange(s), etc., while several other possible S2S’s are right there on your phone, just waiting for you to work in only a few minutes. A QRS S2S can take 10 minutes to complete. Dozens of people are waiting…Perhaps one in three ends with the other activator going QRT, QSY, or taking a break.
The point is that you - the lead activator - have to create an exchange with the other operator that hopefully will be clear and make the S2S contact work out.
Last but not least - experienced S2S operators can make contacts that few others can do. Even very weak signals come up out of the noise. It helps if you already know who the other op is. If you can both hear each other, even 10% of the time, you may be able to get the S2S just because you know you can if you try!
WG0AT Steve has made S2S contacts with me here in Colorado when we can hardly hear each other. Seeing the spot, or hearing the chasers, is the key. These are signals diffracted across the mountains, down in the noise, etc. It might take several minutes… Steve calls it “ESP”. QRS helps.
73
Carey/George
KX0R
8 Likes
And in CW usage several of those are potentially confusing to some.
QRL ? is regularily used to ask if a frequency is in use. Most hams know and understand this. Its ITU meaning and that published by some amateur bodies when use with a question mark is “Are you busy”. Thats its meaning given in the RSGB website too. However its use
Worse is just a one or two question marks sent on their own ? ? . This must cause other operators to wonder wether they are hearing just one side of a QSO where the person is asking for a repeat. Or was it the operator lost in the middle of the pile up and trying to get me to repeat my RST? Or was he/she asking if the frequency was being used? Who knows.
QRT is widely used to indicate that the operator is closing down. Its ITU meaning and that given on the RSGB website is, “Stop sending”. (Once widely used at sea by shore stations to stop people transmitting when an SOS was in progress, or you’ve had a serious receiver break down)
QRX has already been mentioned .
QRZ. I often hear it used on its own without a question mark where the operator wants to know if anyone is calling him - ie QRZ de ZB1QQ K., The ITU meaning of QRZ with out the question mark is of course ;- "You are being called by… on …(khz)
QRZ? de ZB1QQ K (with the question mark) of course means who is calling me?
There are large numbers of websites which list alternative meanings.
NB My comments are in no way meant to criticise any individual person, persons still alive, living, dead or deceased or somewhere between. 
1 Like
No doubt leading to confusion. “Confusion will be my epitaph …” [Sorry, one of my favourite songs]
Just like the meaning of many words has changed over time, so have many Q-code meanings in the world of amateur radio, unfortunately not always in a consistent way.
The original definitions quoted by David @M6GYU and others were fit for purpose in the age of commercial and military Morse communications. But their usage and context doesn’t apply or make sense for our hobby and it’s appropriate that amateurs have adapted rather than adopted them.
Just to take another one: QSK – I can’t recall ever using this in a CW QSO. A CW newbie friend - looking at my Q-codes list above - asked me yesterday what QSK means, and that led to a discussion about break-in settings on our rigs. I rarely use full break-in (QSK operation) because I find it distracting in noisy conditions but I have it short-ish so I can hear if some is interrupting my sending. This is useful during repeated CQs but also if I’m interrupted while I’m replying to a chaser. If I determine it’s a third party, I start adding the original chaser’s callsign to the start of my overs to let the interrupter know I’m not replying to him and that he should back off.
2 Likes
I guess you could look at the Amateur use of such codes as if they were a strange local dialect, reasonably comprehensible to the locals, but sometimes tricky or impossible for others… 
…seems (in Amateur use) to be addressed to the frequency concerned (and only incidentally to anyone on it). If there’s no reply then the assumption is that there’s nobody on the frequency and therefore the frequency is clear for use. That, of course, assumes anyone on frequency actually sends an answer, and the one sending the “QRL?” bothers to listen for one, but assuming they do, it gets the job done. While the pedantic answer should be “QRL”, in practice any answer is good enough to get the message across, and if the frequency is busy, something short like a single “A” should get the message over with minimal disruption.
I’ve not encountered “QRT” used as an imperative, though I can see that in certain contexts it could certainly be interpreted as one. In the (non-imperative) question and answer semantics usually applied to Q codes in the Amateur dialect, “QRT?” would mean “Are you closing down?” and “QRT” would mean “I am closing down” (where “closing down” is just a less clunky way of saying “stopping transmitting”). Of course questions can sometimes be interpreted two ways, and it seems to me that’s where at least some of the confusion arises. Is it “Are you closing down?” or “Do you want me to close down?”…
The catch becomes learning to understand the dialect. 
2 Likes
I always send my summit ref and expect the other station to do as well. K6EL is a good example of why. Elliot is often on one of two summits near his house. Many times he is only chasing S2S contacts so he doesn’t post an “alert” or “spots” for his callsign. Therefore, I would have no idea which summit he was actually on until he summits his S2S log to the database. He’s not the only one doing this as well – I’ve operated this way several times. The other issue is when operators aren’t sure of what summit they will actually be on. Their alert is posted something like: W0C/FR-???.
I also can’t always rely on cell coverage to receive the “spots” of other activators. My operating positions are determined by ease of setup, wind/weather shelter, proximity to other people on popular summits, etc. I may have cell coverage 20 feet away but not where I’m operating. I’d rather record all relevant contact info realtime! I think that is more inline with the spirit of ham radio and making radio contacts from summits anyway. Just my opinion…
73, Brad
WA6MM
4 Likes
Here in the US, most folks will just send “S2S” or S2S and their call. Sometimes activators will also send “S2S? S2S?” instead of a CQ, and most chasers will pause so the activator can listen for weak stations.
As for the exchange, most ops I’ve worked will send their Reference info. Some don’t, and I suppose that’s ok (I can get it off SOTA Spotter on my phone, or the website when I get home). Purists will groan at that, but that’s how I do my hobby – YMMV.
73, Jim KK0U
I use AS with some regularity. Most ops catch on quickly. POTA chasers are a little more unruly, in my experience.
73, Jim KK0U
Brad, without fail I always, always send my summit reference during an s2s exchange. If there is a doubt about what got in the chaser’s log, I check “show who chased me” and follow-up by email. If the guy on the other end is a member of FOC (we have many of those in Sota) I send the ref only once, at about 28 wpm.
Elliott, K6EL
2 Likes
I don’t try to predict the skill of the S2S operator. When I send the ref during a S2S QSO [always twice and at same speed as rest of QSO] it’s also for the benefit of other chasers listening. Some folk have complained (on this reflector) that we activators don’t send the summit ref often enough - and not everyone is monitoring SOTAwatch.
3 Likes
Hi Elliot,
Yeah, I know you do that OM. I was only using chasing S2S on peaks without “activating” per se as another example of why operators need to send their summit ref. I didn’t mean to imply you don’t do that…sorry! Some operators seem to assume they can just go to Sotawatch and lookup the other stations S2S ref via alerts or spots when they get home – or when get around to logging the activation. In your case, you send your ref but if the other activator doesn’t copy it correctly due to band conditions or is a QRS operator, he won’t be able to quickly find this information until you post your S2S in the database. What he should have done is ask you to repeat your ref until he copies it properly! That’s why I have to ask you to repeat your ref several times when your signal is weak – I learned that after I realized that many times you’re only chasing S2S contacts ;-).
73, es HNY!
Brad
WA6MM
1 Like
Most QRS ops are CW newbies and wouldn’t have the confidence to do such a brave thing especially mid pile-up with other chasers waiting impatiently to have their turn. All the more reason we activators need to get better at sending our summit ref more often. If he didn’t catch the ref the first time he shouldn’t have to wait long to hear it repeated.
1 Like
I think I probably need to send my ref more often in pile ups. I do sometimes get asked for it!!
That said once the pile ups gone, I always call CQ SOTA etc., along with my ref.
1 Like