Successful Amateur Radio communication often depends on a set of well-defined and unambiguous specifications. Just think of the problem of meeting a friend on the air for a predetermined QSO, The two most important factors are of course time and frequency for successful QSO. If we use an ambiguous time, it is easy for the other party to mistake when they need to be on the air. 9 o'clock can mean A.M. or P.M. whereas 21:00 is clearly 9:00 P.M.

Also if both parties are not local the question of which time zone is being used may arise. Good ham practice usually uses UTC to remove the time zone question.  Especially when using UTC it is very important to make sure it is the correct day, for example here in Ohio 01:00 UTC Saturday is actually 8:00 P.M. Friday locally.

The second concern to successfully meeting is to be on the proper frequency. Modern radio's digital readouts make this fairly easy, but only if the correct frequency is stated. 14.005 and 14.050 have the same digits but are quite far apart on the dial!

Another area where mistakes can easily creep in recording another stations call sign in your log. No matter if it is paper or computerized logging SO2B is quite different from S02B. Poland instead of Western Sahara can be a real let down for the avid DXer. Reading the previous sentence you might have not even noticed the difference between the two call signs. The first call is Sierra Oscar Two Radio and the second is Sierra Zero Two Radio. The problem is that zero and letter O are often difficult to distinguish in most type fonts. Of course computerized logging and QSLing have greatly compounded this problem.

The best solution is to find a font that uses characters that look very different for O and Zero. Some fonts use wider and narrow characters to distinguish the two, unfortunately I and many other operators forget which is which even if then can see the difference! A better solution is a font that use a slash or dot across or inside the circle that makes up the zero character. So called "Slashed Zero Fonts" can be a great help to hams. There are a number of different slashed zero fonts include below for you to download. The zero and often the other characters have different appearances that will appeal to a variety of different tastes.

The fonts below use the True Type technology, which works within MS Windows and makes the fonts available to almost all modern software programs. In the pre-Windows days most individual fonts were either controlled by installation in specific software programs (although they were available system-wide many years before to the early Mac users!) or as part of your printer (many higher end printers had slide in font cartridges.)

To get around the pre-Windows font problem many astute users discovered that they could trick programs to show a slashed zero like character by using a special ASCII character. By holding down the Alt key then typing 0216 on the number pad a character Ø, used mostly in Norse alphabets, was produced (for this column I will display it in read to distinguish it from a true slashed zero.) This looked fine on most printed documents but a big problem occurred when you attempted to electronically manipulate call signs containing this special character-- they did not sort correctly because of course they were not zeros. The problem was even more acute when you tried to use the Ø in mathematical manipulations such as spreadsheets, again because it was not a zero strings of digits containing it did not add, subtract, multiply or divide correctly. Another trick character used was the Alt 1000 or Φ or more correctly called Phi Greek character. Again the results were often disastrous in all but printed copy.

Recently the problem has raised its ugly head again, this time in automated scoring process of contest log checking and the ARRL's Log Book of The World electronic QSL system. As you can quickly see if a submitter uses Ø, Φ or even mistakenly the letter O the call sign submitted will not match any in the checker's database of valid call signs, resulting in zero points and usually a deduction of a few penalty points!

So the rules for unambiguous and accurate logging:

1. Always use the correct character. Be careful to strike the correct key O or 0

2. Never use Alt 0216 Ø or Alt 1000 Φ in your log.

3. When speaking always say "zero" instead of "oh" when referring to a number (one acceptable alternative is saying "aught" or "naught" for zero).

4. Find a good, easily read font that you like and install it on all your computers. User preferences will vary with some preferring fixed width and others variable width fonts.*