Power abbreviations -- what to log?

[VA7CPC]

I've been working the ARRL CW DX contest.  The incoming exchange is "Power".

When somebody sends me "KW", I log it as "1000".

. . . Is that a mistake ?

I should have asked _before_ the middle of the contest -- sorry . . .

           Charles

[K3STX]

Log what they send . I think the robot accepts K and KW, but I convert "nn" to 99 and "att" to 100. When they send "ak" I simply log "K".
And how terrible were conditions on 40 tonight!!?? I have given up.

Paul

[VA7CPC]

I think I'll start doing that (logging what they send) tomorrow morning.

40 is poor -- but 10/15/20 were doing very nicely earlier.  I got several new countries.

        Charles

[W5DQ]

Log what they send . I think the robot accepts K and KW, but I convert "nn" to 99 and "att" to 100. When they send "ak" I simply log "K".
And how terrible were conditions on 40 tonight!!?? I have given up.

Paul

I do the same thing as Paul.

And yes, 40 did stink on Sat evening. Funny thing was on Fri evening, 40 was hot and 80 was crap. On Sat, it was reversed for me. 40 was terrible while I managed to work about 15 or so new ones on 80M. I finally have a semi-decent 80M antenna and even though its a 6BTV trapped vertical, it seem to play nice on 80M.

Gene W5DQ

[N3QE]

I think I'll start doing that (logging what they send) tomorrow morning.

40 is poor -- but 10/15/20 were doing very nicely earlier.  I got several new countries.

I too felt that 40 was poor but maybe I just set my expectations too high for 40? I'm pretty sure I worked all the major super-contest stations that were running on 40 without any difficulty and when I was running on 40 I worked a number of Euro/Asiatic Russia stations on 40 at the 100W level too.

Certainly 15 and 20 were very very deep wells to Europe and Asia/Pacific in the contest, just astoundingly good, and I was milking them both Saturday and especially Sunday.

Casually I work lots of 100W simple wire antenna stations on 40 all the time outside of contests, and I was expecting them to chime in during the ARRL DX, and that's probably where my expectation wasn't met.

[PD2R]

I'm always envious of those people who are able to send "K" instead of "one thousand" ("1000" in CW). In The Netherlands when you a running Dutch legal power limit, you need to send "four hundred" ("400" in CW). I was wandering if there is an abbriviation for that as well?

Most of the US stations are running US legal limit which is 1500 Watts. The vast majority just sends "59(9) K". I suspect that they are not reducing their power to 1000 Watts. If that is the case, can we just send "59 ten" ("599 10" in CW) instead of "59 four hundred" ("599 400" in CW)?

I assume that the contest sponser will consider this as bad operating practice. But then again, they don't seem to have any problems with stations sending "K" wilst running 1500 Watts. Obviously the difference between 10 and 400 Watts is much bigger then the difference between a 1000 and 1500 Watts. But where do they draw the line?

Just curious about this...

[KQ0C]

The US stations send their state, not their power.

[N3QE]

In The Netherlands when you a running Dutch legal power limit, you need to send "four hundred" ("400" in CW). I was wandering if there is an abbriviation for that as well?

Most of the US stations are running US legal limit which is 1500 Watts. The vast majority just sends "59(9) K". I suspect that they are not reducing their power to 1000 Watts. If that is the case, can we just send "59 ten" ("599 10" in CW) instead of "59 four hundred" ("599 400" in CW)?

I assume that the contest sponser will consider this as bad operating practice. But then again, they don't seem to have any problems with stations sending "K" wilst running 1500 Watts. Obviously the difference between 10 and 400 Watts is much bigger then the difference between a 1000 and 1500 Watts. But where do they draw the line?

Using CW cut numbers "4TT" is pretty universal where that's a limit. And quicker in CW than "10" or in fact a lot of other strings that might be sent.

There are other cut numbers that just lead to confusion. "ENN" is pretty obviously "599" for RST but "ETT" was not obviously 500 to me. (I thought it was a W!) I also got thrown every time last weekend on 490 as "4NT". Distinctive... that's for sure... by the time I got him on the fifth band I think I didn't have to ask for a repeat :-)

Tim.

[PD2R]

KQ0C: You are obviously right but we also have Alaska and Hawaii. Furthermore there are other countries with higher power limits then 1 kW and by far the most of them send "K" as well.

N3QE: Thanks for the info. Unfortunately there is no simple abbriviation for 400 Watts in Phone. I guess we just have to work a little harder ;-)