SOTA CW Exchange Examples for Activators and Chasers
by K6STR
Typical exchange with me as activator:
Me: CQ SOTA DE K6STR
Chaser: W1AW
Me: W1AW GM UR 55N 55N BK
Chaser: BK R R GM MIKE UR 559 559 BK
Me: TU 73 E E
If I can only copy a partial call:
Me: CQ SOTA DE K6STR
Chaser: W1$^%&@,,,,
Me: W1?
Chaser: W1AW
Me: W1AW GM UR 55N 55N BK
Chaser: BK R R GM MIKE UR 559 559 GL BK
Me: BK TU 73 E E
Chaser: E E
S2S:
Me: CQ SOTA DE K6STR
Chaser: S2S
Me: S2S?
Chaser: S2S DE W1AW
Me: W1AW TU S2S UR 55N 55N ON W6/CT-123 BK
Chaser: BK R R GM MIKE UR 559 55N ON W6/CT-456 W6/CT-456 BK
Me: BK R R TU S2S 73 E E
Chaser: E E
Variations:
CQ CQ SOTA DE K6STR K6STR
--- or ---
CQ SOTA DE K6STR
--- or ---
CQ SOTA CQ SOTA DE K6STR K6STR ON W6/CT-123 W6/CT-123 BK
Sometimes, people will end their CQ with a âKâ :
CQ CQ SOTA DE K6STR K6STR K
Sometimes, chaser will end their message with a TU or GL instead of BK or K
Abbreviations and signal reports
There are many abbreviations in CW which arose to make things easier or quicker. It is almost its own language! Here are some common ones:
DE from
TU thank you
GL good luck
ES âandâ --- TU ES GL means âthank you and good luckâ
TNX thanks
E E dit dit = bye-bye!
UR you are. Sometimes people run the U and R together into one character
R R roger roger
GM good morning
GA good afternoon
GE good evening
BK when sent at the end of a message, it means âback to youâ
When sent at the beginning of a message it means âback to meâ
Typically used when there are quick messages going back and forth.
Youâll hear it a lot on SOTA exchanges. Not everyone uses it, though.
Sometimes you just have to assume when they finished their message
Sometimes the BK is sent as two letters, and sometimes as one character all run
together as indicated by the underline.
K âoverâ
AGN again â please send your last message again
QSL I acknowledge your message
QRS please reduce speed (slow down your code speed)
QRL? Is this frequency in use?
73 best regards
AS âwaitâ . The A and S are run together as one character.
Iâll send this a couple of times if I need the chasers to stand by (e.g. mast fell over, etc).
S2S summit to summit
FB âfine businessâ means very good or excellent as in:
TNX FB QSO - thanks for the awesome contact
RST signal report, stands for âreadability, strength, toneâ. CW signal reports are 3 numbers.
The first two are just like on SSB (e.g. 59), and the last number is the tone.
The tone number is almost always a â9â, meaning perfect tone.
So a strong signal report would be : 599
Because 9s take longer to send, people very often replace them with an âNâ
So instead of 599, youâll hear 5NN
RST? what is my signal report?
REF? what is the summit reference?
Tips
A great way to get practice CW is to chase SOTA. You already know the activator call sign from seeing their spot. You just have to be able to recognize your own call sign when they come back to you. You can use your phone to record the audio and play it back at your leisure.
People will generally assume that you can copy what is being sent to you at the same speed as you are sending. So, donât send too fast! People will usually slow down for you. Sometimes though, it may take them a bit to find the setting to change the code speed. Youâll often hear a combination of slightly slower code speed and bigger spaces between the letters. Donât be afraid to send âQRSâ if you need them to go slower.
When activating, it can sometimes be hard to copy a call sign. Sometimes if a bunch of chasers call at once, they all just blur together. Sometimes, it is just one station but there is noise or they are sending too fast for you to copy the call sign. One approach is to send the first character or two with a question mark: N6? After this, the caller will send their full call either once or twice, at which point you can pick up a couple more characters and send it with a question mark again and keep going like that until you get the full call sign. If you are worried about your callsign copy skills, try N1CLCâs callsign copy practice HERE. We have more info on improving your CW skills at W6SOTA.org/cw.
