[GreenKeys] Replying to David

[sdaitch at kuw.ibb.gov]

Far too many years ago, when VOA ran the RTTY schedules between Greenville
and Washington and Greenville with the overseas relay stations, we used a slightly
different convention.

Because we called our message traffic our FAXFAX system, that was the header.

The stunt boxes in the M-28 systems were programmed to start punching tape on the
receive machines and the NNNN was used to stop the tape puncher.

I think the actual coding for the stop NNNN was really NNN, in the event we 
took a character hit.

One minor problem with using FAXFAX for the punch start sequence was that if we
were chatting with the distant end and we inadvertantly used the phrase, the tape
punch would start.  ZCZC might have been more reliable, in the sense it usually 
isn't part of message traffic, but if this discussion was on the traffic circuit, the
tape punch would have started!

73
SHeldon

----- Original Message -----
From: NNN7DXB at aol.com
Date: Thursday, September 30, 2010 5:10 am
Subject: [GreenKeys] Replying to David

> 
> To tell where messages began, WU developed the "ZCZC" letter combo.
> It was odd enough and easily recognized and not likely to be 
> misunderstoodfor anything OTHER than a "symbol", much like NNNN 
> (both developed about
> the same time period).
> Some would say that NNNN stood for "Nothing Follows", but there is 
> no proof
> of that. > anymore.
> 
> Many commercial teletype operations later adopted the ZCZC and NNNN
> routines, especially NEWS stations using RTTY in Europe. NATO 
> militariesalso used them.
> 
> A variation of the ZCZC is VV   XXX###, or VV, 3 spaces, followed 
> by the
> Channel ID and Channel Number (VV   HNA001).
> 
> VV   XXX### was often used by US, UK and CAN military tactical 
> CommCentersover field circuits. The UK and CAN preceded these with 
> UU or HH. UU =
> denoted an Unclas message followed; HH was to let you know a 
> classifiedmessage was coming.
> 
> Dave