Hello Group,
Hello Peter,

Peter Dodd wrote:

What tends to happen in practice is that if the signal is audible
then a RST report is sent.
If it is sent in the form, say '42N' (the N being a delimiter rather
than a tone) I cannot see anything wrong with that.
It has been suggested that to use four dashes _ _ _ _. This could be
used to say 'the signal is audible and reduce the dot size if you
want to get the QSO over a bit quicker'.

I vote for the four dashes in *this* meaning for
three reasons:
1. Dashes are much more detectable as dots
especially in cases of pulsatile and/or Lux-Effect
noise circumstances. If A could hear B very well,
B could detect A very bad due to local conditions.
2. It stands for nothing I guess (apart from the
old fashioned german "ch").
3. It would be a good match to the dashed style of
TMO.

The main problem is that on being told that the signal is audible
there is a temptation to go for fast CW. It happened to me (twice)
but I wont go for fast CW again in the middle of a SCW QSO.

A signal could be audible but nearly unreadable in
"fast" Morse. Detecting a carrier is much easier
than to understand a "normal speed" code (not only
for neurophysiologic reasons...). "Reducing dot
length" could mean in steps of 500ms.

There are two reasons:
The bandwidth settings and often the receiver tuning have to be
re-adjusted. During this performance the signal can get lost.
The present unofficial bandplan, with all SCW above 137.65 seems to
be working quite well. To use fast CW in that part of the band (when
the band is busy) is a bit unsociable.

Agreed!

The simplest solutions are nearly always the best.

Fully agreed! Adding four dashes to our source
codes should be very easy.
(I'm using the "!" for encoding it...)

54°16'N / 10°04'E, JO54ag
73 es gl de Peter, DF3LP