[ARDF] ARDF Transmissions

[Jay Hennigan]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004, Marvin Johnston wrote:

>
> What is the meaning of MO, and why was it chosen for ARDF competitions?
> Somehow, it seems like this would be a common question and we shoud know
> the answer!

Is it still April?

In the early days of ARDF, only three transmitters were used.  Tx number
one sent M-O-E, as it does today.  Transmitter two sent L-A-R-R-Y, and
number three sent C-U-R-L-Y.  A fourth transmitter, M-A-R-V-I-N, was used
briefly.  Searches for a fifth stooge were made in vain, and for a while
ARDF was limited to four transmitters.  In order to allow additional
transmitters, simplify things and make ARDF available to non-hams who don't
understand Morse, the cadence of the original M-O-E transmitter was used,
and the number of final short pulses expanded to represent transmitters
two through five.

Yep.  It's April.  Just checking.

I don't think that the Morse letters are in any way significant or an
abbreviation.  It's just a series of long-ish carrier pulses in a
countdown function.  3 - 2 - [Tx ID].  More logically, it could be
M - O - T - [Tx ID], as in 3 - 2 - 1 - Go.  Just something distinctive
long enough to home in on but not so lengthy that one needs to wait
too long for the sequence to repeat to ID the transmitter.

Similarly, E I S, and H don't have any particular meaning in terms of
abbreviations.   Five happens to be 5.

-- 
Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Administration - jay at west.net
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