Foundations of Amateur Radio

A curious thing happens when you become part of the amateur community, you start to talk like an amateur. This phenomenon isn't specific to being a radio amateur, it happens whenever you join any community. Lead by example, one word at a time, you start to inherit a vocabulary that represents that community. Amateur radio, rife with acronyms and so-called Q-Codes, a standardised set of three-letter codes that start with the letter "Q", does this in spades.

If you've been around amateurs for more than 30 seconds, it's likely that you have already heard QSL, QTH and QRM, colloquially short for "Yup", "Home" and "Noise". There's an official meaning if you're keen. You can use the three letters as both a question and an answer, so QSL can mean "Can you acknowledge receipt?" and "I am acknowledging receipt."

Similarly, QTH means "What is your position in latitude and longitude (or according to any other indication)?" and QRM means "Is my transmission being interfered with?"

In those cases, used either with Morse code or Voice, they can make getting the message across simpler, faster, and more accurate, all important aspects of communication. It's easier to get QTH across to an amateur who doesn't speak English as their first language than it is to ask the whole question.

Other letter groups also creep into common language of an amateur. You've likely heard the letters: "XYL", but if you haven't, let me explain. Given that amateur radio is an activity dominated by men, "YL" refers to Young Lady and "XYL", refers to eX-Young Lady, a less than complimentary way of referring to one's wife.

I'd like to point out something curious.

In Morse code, XYL is sent using: -..- -.-- .-..

It's intended to represent the word WIFE which is sent in Morse code as: .-- .. ..-. .

Now, if you know anything about Morse, you'll know that a dit is one unit, a dah is three. Individual elements are spaced by one unit. The space between letters is three units and the space between words is seven units.

Armed with that knowledge, XYL takes 39 units and WIFE takes 31 units to send.

So, sending the shortcut actually takes longer and it's clear that this choice is not about efficiency. Describing someone as an eX-Young Lady to refer to your Significant Other seems very 1950's to me. In the situation where you are the female amateur operator, the apparently appropriate way to refer to your Significant Other is as Old Man or "OM". Are female operators supposed to refer to themselves as YL or XYL? Really?

Sexism aside, this is extremely offensive in a same-sex and gender fluid community.

Then there's the symbol "88", apparently meant to refer to "Hugs and Kisses", not something I'd feel comfortable sending to anyone other than my partner who is emphatically not an amateur, let alone the idea that it would be appropriate to send it to any random station or the connotations around males sending such a message to a random female operator.

So, given that we now live in the 21st century and we're no longer in 1950, perhaps it's time to consider what language we teach new amateurs.

One proposal by Chris M0YNG is to refer to the Operator as "OP" and the Significant Other as "SO". Seems like a good start.

I will point out that this conversation was brought to my attention by Andreas DJ3EI who was participating in a Mastodon.radio conversation with Tim N7KOM who started the thread.

I think it's a worthwhile thing to discuss such an evolution of our language, it goes to the heart of our community, you are what you say you are, and words matter.

So, what words, acronyms and symbols do you use in your amateur community and what are you teaching new amateurs?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB