Most of the time when operating on the HF frequencies you will find that English is everyone's second language. Many hams from all over the world will know enough English to be able to communicate on some level.

So, now you have this amateur radio license and you have connected to this fellow ham in Germany. But you don't know any German. What you are beginning to suspect is that the German operator doesn't know any English either!

Can you still communicate? Yes. Sort of. Maybe.

You can use something called "Q" signals to communicate. It won't quite be on the level of what Aunt Bertha and Uncle Jim are doing on the coming weekend but you will be able to exchange some information. (Please be aware that if "Q" signals are followed by a "?" they are expressed in the form of a question.)

Here's another means of communicating information. Let's say you were having trouble getting your callsign to the other station. The way to clairify the callsign WB0BJT would be to annouce it as "Whiskey Bravo Zero Bravo Juliett Tango."

Be aware that Ham Radio operators like to play with "phoney phonetics." In other words, using phonetics that are not internationally recognized. Using the previously refered to callsign, it might come out as "WHISKEY BRAVO ZERO BIG JUNK TRANSMITTER". It is a lot of fun to do that but when there really is the possibility of confusion, especially with foreign contacts or in marginal conditions, it's best to use the recognized phonetics.

Now we need to be able to exchange some information about how well we are communicating or how well we are able to hear one another. You may have heard some radio operators saying "you are 59 here in East Podunk, NJ." 59? Maybe we better talk about that.

This system of signal readability has been around for a long time. It is refered to as RST reporting.

R=Readability
S=Strength
T=Tone

The "R" part is based on a scale from 0-5. "0" is totally unreadable and "5" is loud and clear, armchair copy. The "S" is the strength of the signal on a scale of 0-9. "0" is a very weak signal and "9" is extremely strong. Some people will use the "S" meter on their receiver or transceiver to use as a reference as the "S" meter is labeled about the correct way for this report. The "T" part of the report is not always used as it only is used on a CW or morse code transmission. It is based on a 0-9 scale and "0" is a raspy tone with no pure tone content. A "9" however is pure DC tone and very pleasant to listen to.

So if you and your German contact need to exchange signal reports, a "599" would normally be as good as it gets.

A very good friend of mine, AL, N9OK, now a silent key, had done a little more with the language barrier. Al was a CW nut and really enjoys working the Russian CW operators who are in fact some of the better CW operators around. Al got an English-Russian translation book and loaded a few key phrases in Russian into his memory keyer. The results are outstanding! It did attract a LOT of attention. So if you like to work a particular part of the world you might try it.

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