No idea. It's like the "599 T TT" exchange that several questioned on the cluster. Not sure how one has zero power.
I suspect "TTT" is actually 100W. Completely cut, 100 is ATT, and if the leading "dit" of the 'A' is missed, for whatever reason, it sounds like "TTT." Given the silly games that get played with keyer speeds mid-exchange-macro, the missing 'dit' might have been sent at 80WPM, and the rest sent at 30WPM, making the 'A' too small to survive the transit to the US. Or the missing 'dit' could have just been eaten by the atmosphere. Just a thought.
Hard to say what he intended. The "TTT" sounded like a long dah followed by two regular dahs. I listened to several exchanges and the dit wasn't there. It sounded the same on different bands, and he was strong on all of them, which caused me to believe that it was more than 100 watts. As I said, others were puzzled by it. I'm guessing he either made a mistake in his macro and/or didn't listen to it to see what he was sending.
Very interesting. From other reports, it's like some folks overseas are trying to reinvent cut numbers. It also occurred to me that the sender may have misread the cut number for '1' as 'E', and was trying to send "ETTT" for 1kW, which was somehow being clobbered by the keyer and/or the delay settings in the keyer/radio. If you use fldigi as the "keyer" with an outboard analog circuit to convert the tones into key closures, it's possible to misadjust fldigi in all kinds of creative ways that make the CW sound terrible. Combining that with mid-exchange speed changes, and there's no telling what kind of nonsense might ultimately emit from the radio.
The only other thing I can think of is, "my power level is none of your business." Kind of like the contest where part of the exchange is to send your age, and there's a note in the rules that XYLs are allowed to send zero or 99 or some other such thing?
A friend of mine checked with an avid contester and he said it was an abbreviation for a Brazilian state. Maybe he misread the rules. I also heard the "TTT" but I logged as a KW. Phil N3ZP
This also makes me think that it was "ATT" where the elements of the "A" got smashed together into one long element. It's not difficult to misconfigure a keyer or its macros, whether hard or soft. If it was my log, I'd write in 100.
The RR exchange by PV8ADI was, apparently by mistake, being used to denote the Brazilian state of Roraima where PV8ADI is located. I understand later in the contest, he had changed his exchange. I submitted it as sent (early in the contest). If he submits his log with a corrected power level exchange, ie 100, it's gonna stink for those who worked him as a mult early on and recorded the RR exchange. As far as TTT goes, I believe that is cut numbers for 1000w with ATT being used for 100w. Frank, W1NK
