"Ralph Mowery" wrote in message
m...

"Sal M. Onella" wrote in message
...
I'm bringing an HF rig to the mountains of Colorado next week. I just
finished assembling a travel kit of dipole elements for 10, 15 and 20.
I
have ropes, pulleys, wire elements, baluns, cable, connectors, a tuner,
VSWR
meter, etc. There's no electricity except for a very few generators,
so
typical urban noise should be absent. Joy!

What's the custom for transmitting my I-D? I think it's "KD6VKW,
PORTABLE
ZERO." It might be "KD6VKW, STROKE ZERO." I've heard both variations
and
I
searched for about 20 minutes and only found that in the US I'm
apparently
not legally required to transmit anything after my callsign. It's
optional.

I know the county and grid square. Since some hams hunt counties and
grid
squares, should I include either when I call CQ? Opinions, please.

TKS
"Sal"
KD6VKW


You are not required to send anything but your call as you mentioned. If
you want to , you can add almost anything after it. For voice , portable
is/was used. The Stroke was used in CW.
If using voice, you may want to say "portable Colorado" if you are not
getting any response to your CQs.


"Portable" is usually interesting enough to get someone's attention.
Inevitably, if anyone happens to be tuning around and finds you and cares to
answer a CQ at all they will call you. If you give out all your exchange in
a CQ, why should they call you if they already have every thing they need
from you?

I have no problem with a continuous beacon as long as you are QSK but there
are a lot of people out there that have their own ideas of how things should
be done and want to police others, so good luck. I have better luck giving
another station a call. This at least occupies the frequency with chatter
that people can find, then QSY 10 kc and give a call. If you weren't too
boring, you will have a pile up. If you don't hear anyone on the band at
all, maybe the band is dead.