Delving Into The History of CQ Call

Every radio amateur knows about CQ calls and I am quite to happy to hear a CQ call on the amateur radio bands as that is an opportunity to start a contact. If you listen to an ongoing conversation on the band and try to break in, you may not be always successful for various reasons. Most common reason is that your signal is not strong enough to be heard in the short interval between the end of one transmission and the beginning of transmission by the next station. Sometimes the stations may be involved in an engaging discussion which may not be ideal to join in the middle of the discussion. So hearing a CQ call is good as the station is going listen carefully for your reply and often weak signals are also picked up, provided that is not a most wanted DXpedition which is calling and you can expect a pileup. In such situations you have to call on the listening frequency of the station, which may be 5, 10 or even more kHz away from their transmitting frequency.

Going back to the history of CQ calls, I was surprised to learn from Wikipedia that it started in the transatlantic cable and landline telegraphy, not among radio amateurs! If ‘K’ is transmitted after the General Call, it is an invitation for any of the hearing stations to call back. It is also mentioned that it was being used by diplomatic, press, maritime, aviation and law enforcement services till those services discontinued the use of Morse telegraphy. CQ calls have been mentioned in publications as early as 1871.

Sometimes you may not get a reply as you have seen in the beginning. In fact I was calling CQ for about 15 minutes today morning on 40m and did not get a reply. As I was using automated calls, using a message recorded in an SD card in my FT-710 radio, I did not feel tired, though I was feeling bored! But I could get reply after the first call itself yesterday and the day before. So it varies with band conditions, timings and the band you are choosing to call, as well as several other factors.

There are specific CQ calls like CQ DX when you are interested only in replies from long distance stations, which you often hear on higher bands like 14 MHz, 21 MHz and so on. CQ TEST sent in CW is a contest call. Corresponding call on phone modes will be CQ CONTEST. If you are looking for a specific region, it could be CQ VK and ZL for Australia and New Zealand. Suppose you are calling by Long Path, that means you have pointed your antenna in the direction for long path propagation rather than short path propagation, which is often used to contact North American stations from this region. If you call CQ in CW, and check the Reverse Beacon Network, you can find out which all automated stations have picked up your call. That gives you information on the propagation from your setup. But, I have not been successful so far, may be because my style of sending CW is not up to the mark for computerized detection of the call!

In general, the protocol is that you do not call CQ on FM repeaters. Same protocol is also often followed on FM repeaters of Low Earth Orbit satellites like Amateur Radio on International Space Station. Reason being that long CQ calls can prevent others from accessing the satellite. You may know that the average pass duration of a LEO satellite in a region is only about 10 minutes and best chances may be there only in the middle of the pass at good elevation, for an operator with suboptimal setup like me. All you have to do is just mention your callsign to indicate your presence and others will call you back. But sometimes, in regions with a low number of LEO satellite operators like ours, people may call CQ so that new operators get time to adjust Doppler tuning. Yet, that has to be avoided if you see that there are many operators on the given pass. Callsign has to be mentioned in full so that even those who are not familiar with your callsign also can pick up and call back.