Rag chewer is a name applied to amateur radio Morse code operators who engage in informal Morse code conversations (known as
chewing the rag) while discussing subjects such as: The weather, their location, signal quality, and their equipment (especially the antennas being used). Meaningful rag chewing between fluent Morse code operators having different native languages is possible because of a common language provided by the
prosigns for Morse code, the International
Q code,
Z code,
RST code, the telegraph era
Phillips Code and
92 codes, and many well known Morse code abbreviations including those discussed in this article. Together all of these traditional conventions serve as a somewhat cryptic but commonly understood language (Lingua Franca) within the worldwide community of amateur radio Morse code operators. These codes and protocols efficiently encode many well known statements and questions from many languages into short simple character groups which may be tapped out very quickly. The international
Q code for instance encodes literally hundreds of full normal language sentences and questions in short three character codes each beginning with the character ''''
. For example, the code word means My transmitting location is
... , which radio operators typically take instead to mean My home is
... . If this code word is followed by a question mark as ''
it means What is your transmitting location?'' Typically very few full words will be spelled out in Morse code conversations. Similar to phone
texting, vowels are often left out to shorten transmissions and turn overs. Other examples, of internationally recognized uses of Morse code abbreviations and well known code numbers, such as those of the
Phillips Code from past eras of telegraph technology, are abbreviations such as '
for weather and for dollar, and from wire signal codes, the numbers ' for
best regards and ''''
for love and kisses''. These techniques are similar to, and often faster than, texting on modern cellphones. Using this extensive
lingua franca that is widely understood across many languages and cultures, surprisingly meaningful Morse code conversations can be efficiently conducted with short transmissions independently of native languages, even between operators who cannot actually communicate by voice because of language barriers. With heavy use of the
Q code and Morse code abbreviations, surprisingly meaningful conversations can readily occur. Note that in the preceding example conversation very few full English words have been used. In fact, in the above example S1 and S2 might not speak the same native language. Although lengthy or detailed conversations could not, of course, be accomplished by radio operators with no common language.
Contesters often use a very specialized and even shorter format for their contacts. Their purpose is to process as many contacts as possible in a limited time (e.g. 100–150 contacts per hour). ==See also==