What does UP mean?

A DXer friend on the CDXC reflector mentioned that VP6D was sending "UP2" but not actually listening 2 kHz HF! Golly! Imagine that! 

Depending on the DX op and the situation, such instructions might be dead right, dead wrong, irrelevant, deliberately misleading ... or something else entirely.

“CQ UP” with no number is clear enough: it simply means "Please use split, transmitting HF of me, not here." Usually.

Sometimes it means the exact opposite: “I’m listening simplex while sending UP because I want to work split … but I have tuned back to my own frequency or accidentally turned off split due to being tired and emotional”. That situation generally sends the Up Police into a frenzy when good DXers notice he is listening and working people simplex so they call him on or close to his TX frequency for a QSO, but the kops are too frenzied to notice and too inept to understand that THEY are the QRMers.

Even more ‘fun’ is the unfortunate situation where the DX sends “UP” while tuning his transmitter HF. Sentient listeners (those not using ridiculously narrow knife-edge filters) will immediately notice from the chirpy signal or random tones that his TX is moving or jumping around … generally because he is using a K3 and has accidentally slaved the TX and RX VFOs, or again has accidentally de-selected split. After a while, his frustration mounts, repeats increase and sending gaps lengthen as he notices the confused pile is no longer responding to his transmissions. Finally he glances down at the radio or DXcluster, realizes what is going on, panics as the penny drops and stops sending for a bit as he desperately shouts for help to “sort out this bloody radio”, whereupon normality is resumed. He may or may not return to his original TX frequency. This mess used to happen regularly on most multi-op DXpeditions using shiny K3s, new and unfamiliar to many. It’s less common today, perhaps because it is patiently explained to everyone during briefings on the long voyage to the DX QTH.

“UP1” (on CW) generally means the same as “UP” …. so why bother sending the “1”? If sent occasionally, it may be a hint that, having been systematically tuning through pile, the DX has ‘reset the cycle’ by retuning his receiver close to 1 kHz up. It’s a signal to experienced DXers to follow suit. It can also mean “I’m working split, so spread out and I’ll find you: leave the naïve/hopeless DXers to their bun-fight exactly 1 up while the rest of us spread out to make more leisurely QSOs”. On rare occasions, it can mean “Call me 1 down” or “Call me on my secret pre-arranged calling frequency, friends”. 

“UP [gap] 7” is another way to send a message to the deserving: the 7 (or whatever) is deliberately delayed so that the majority of eager over-excited me-me-me callers are already transmitting (salivating like Pavlov’s dogs) so miss it, or else assume it is some other station sending random nonsense. The delayed message works even better on SSB if the instruction or code word is muttered quietly in the DX station’s native tongue: as soon as one of his friends ‘gets it’, word goes out to the others and the pileup splits in two. Clever DXpeditioners can keep this charade up for some while, returning to the non-deserving callers every so often to ding the dinner bell and give the impression that they are about to be fed. Clever DXers listen hard and watch carefully to figure out what's going on.

I'll leave you to figure out for yourselves what "UP [gap] DN" really means.

“Up 5 to 10” on SSB may mean “call me up 5-ish but, chaps, it really would help if you were to spread out a bit from there, thanks awfully”, or “up 5 or up 10”, or “up 5, 7.5 or 10”, or “I’m tuning around the pile above me vaguely in the approximate vicinity of two to ten VFO clicks HF, trying desperately to pick out any recognizable phonetics” … or something else entirely (maybe “Oh boy, just listen to that huge pile!", the bunny-in-headlight moment that strikes every DXpeditioner). In a big pileup, it simply means “UP”. In a small pileup, or sent by an inexperienced DXpeditioner, it means “UP precisely 5, no more, no less”. Same with "Up five to fifteen" and so forth: for some it's a literal instruction, for others merely an indication.

“UP [anything]” can also be whatever leftover message has been programmed into the keyer, voice keyer or PC, remnants of a previous user. Like “CQ TEST”, it sometimes helps to send a longer CQ call for a micro-break while logging the previous QSO or sipping coffee, to trigger the RBN, or to signal the cycle-reset. Normally, though, the full message would either not be used at all by a slick op, or truncated after the “CQ” with a deft tap on the ESC-key or PTT.

For such brief messages, that’s a whole lot of meaning!

Stay tuned, folks. My next topic may or may not be “QRX5” …

73

Gary ZL2iFB

The joy of CW

I just enjoyed my slowest CW QSO of the year so far: I worked WA4KIT on 17m CW. Allen has only been using CW for a month so was QRS, hand-sending slow and steady with very few mistakes, mostly corrected, hence easy to copy. I found he copied my ropy hand-sent CW just fine with Farnsworth spacing which seemed more natural for me, sending characters at about 15 WPM but with extended gaps for him to do the mental look-up and (I guess) writing each character on a scratch pad. He told me I was the first station he had worked outside the US. I pictured him grinning ear-to-ear! So nice to make someone's day. It's 40 years since I learnt the code and I remember how taxing it was to concentrate hard, so I'm full of admiration for new ops making actual CW QSOs, not just sending minimal info but listening and responding to the other end. Fantastic! I'll send him a QSL card to commemorate this momentous event.