HI in Morse Code

HI HI is how operators laugh

This is the part nobody expects. On the air, HI HI does not mean "hello hello". It is laughter - the Morse equivalent of writing haha. An operator who sends a bad joke and then .... .. .... .. is chuckling at his own punchline.

Where it comes from is a matter of dispute, and the honest answer is that nobody knows for certain. The most repeated explanation is that a run of dots at speed sounds like giggling, which is at least plausible when you hear it: twelve dots in a row, evenly spaced, do have a rhythm to them. Play it above at 25 words per minute and judge for yourself.

What is not in dispute is that the usage is old and universal. It turns up in landline telegraph traffic long before amateur radio existed, and it is still in daily use on the CW bands. If you learn one piece of operator slang, this is the one.

Saying hello properly on the air

If you actually want to greet someone in Morse, HI is not what you send. A contact starts with a call, not a greeting:

• CQ -.-. --.- - "is anyone listening?", sent into an empty band
• DE -.. . - "this is", followed by your callsign
• GM, GA, GE - good morning, good afternoon, good evening, once you are talking to someone

The phrasebook has the rest of them, and the QSO builder puts a whole contact together in order.

Sending it by hand

Six dots sounds easy and is not. Because there is no dash to break it up, HI is a test of evenness: if your dots drift longer or the gap between H and I gets short, the whole thing arrives as one run of dots, and a run of dots is a different character every time you miscount.

• Four dots is H. Five is the digit 5. Six would be nothing at all.
• The gap between H and I has to be three units - the same length as a dash. Shorter, and the receiving end hears six dots and writes down whatever they think fits.

The key measures what you actually send, dot by dot, and shows where the gaps land.