Foundation: Intro continued

I missed a week of notation and i've now caught up with the intro...
As we were gently broken into the Foundation course, the introduction ran into another evening under the moon-lit sails.

We were told about the must's and must not's when it comes to identifying oneself. Upon getting on the airwaves, find a spot by requesting if anyone is using the bandwidth. Then we use what is known as CQ, seek you - ha! This is a call out to other hams to make contact. Upon each CQ call you must provide your id using the same mode of communication e.g. voice, morse, CW. This also applies to handing over, changing frequency and dare I say, talking for longer than 15 minutes - on the air waves really there is not an awful lot to say, particularly with regard to the Q code (a series of abbreviations) mentioning the weather, old boys and the signal strength. Tis true there is no coding for the female of the species. I shall make one up, LFB. There.

There were more tedious rules about not using your own codes, sticking to those known. Morse. Mmm. Oh and addresses, for your license. As I frequent to myself... I do not have a permenat address for correspondance, I told you, I live on a boat... One thing you need to know for the exam is that to change address contact Ofcom. There are certain bands we can use and some we cant. There is a chart notifying of this so I wont go into details.

BTW (I apologise if these code words upset!), if I haven't mentioned the gang and I are working through the Foundation booklet available from RSGB Radio Society Great Britain.

Roger.