RagChew Newsletter

Submitting Reports

Reports from each Tuesday's new are submitted using our handy-dandy webform system built just for us by Nigel G4RWI (thanks mate).  Nigel's software generates the spreadsheet listing the stations worked by our team and the reports section that appear in each week's RagChew newsletter.  

To submit your report, use your web browser to go to:

bit.ly/CQQRSNET

and just follow the instructions.  If you discover you've make a mistake or want to add something, as long as you keep the browser page open after submission you can go back and make changes.

Submitting Articles

Members' articles make the newsletter such an interesting read.  Although you can email unformatted articles, I'd prefer to receive them already formatted using your favorite word processor (eg the free Libre Office suite);  I can then convert your article to images and put them straight in.  With plain text, I need to do an additional amount of formatting and fiddling to make it look ok in MailChimp, the system we use to generate the newsletter, so I'd prefer to receive your article word processed.

And please make it look interesting at attractive to our readers by adding one or more images.

So if possible please send me your articles formatted as follows:

• File format:  .docx (Word) or .pages (Apple Pages)

• Font:  Helvetica 15 point

• Margins:  left 0.5cm, right 0.5cm, top 0.5cm bottom 0.5cm

• Background colour:  Hex # F7F4E9, RGB mix: Red 247 Green 244 Blue 233

• Images:  Format your images to allow the text to wrap around, then arrange them to the right and left of the text where appropriate (unless the image is important to the article and needs to be large and centred with no text to the left or right).

The RagChew newsletter uses by design a particularly relaxed but positive writing style;  the style has been chosen to reflect the net's principles used to support and encourage our team.   For more info on the principles of the CQQRS net and the newsletter, see our Principles section - click here.  To help make your article easy and enjoyable to read, here's some suggestions:

• Clarity of writing usually follows clarity of thought;  plan the key points.

• Avoid the metaphors and other figures of speech that you too often see in print.

• Don't use a long word where a short one will do.

• If it's possible to cut-out a word, cut it out.

• Avoid jargon if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

• Apostrophe-S is used only to indicate ownership (eg the key's cable).  Do not use 'apostrophe s'  for plurals.

• Single quotation marks or italics are best used to highlight a particular word or phrase;  double quotation marks are best used when you are quoting something someone has said or written.

• Use a double space before new sentences that follow the full-stops in a paragraph.

• Break any of these guidelines rather than say anything that a reader might find grating.

Writing not your strong point?  I'm very happy to help you write your article - or even consider using an Artificual Intelligence system like ChatGPT to do the research, to edit and provide grammar and style help, or even to write it from scratch!  See below for more.

Send your article (or ask for a bit of help) to Mark VK2KI:

cqqrsnet@gmail.com

Artificial Intelligence Instruction

Artificial Intelligence tools are now available to help create written (and other) material from scratch.  Articles written without AI assistance are of course preferred and AI should not replace creation of material by real humans - but it can help with the creation process if you wish to have a go.  

So if you'd like to have a go at using a Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence tool (eg ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, etc) to write an article for the RagChew newsletter, you could try asking the tool something like the following (by copy/pasting the entire set of sentences frombelow to the Prompt area on the tool and replacing the red text with your own):

You are a writer that aligns your work with the principles used in the CQQRS Newsletter, which are detailed on the website https://sites.google.com/view/cqqrs/home/principles and the writing guidelines on the website https://sites.google.com/view/cqqrs/home/ragchew-newsletter.  I am an amateur radio operator who enjoys the art of slow Morse code - also known as QRS.  Please draft an article for me to edit and validate for submission to the CQQRS slow Morse code weekly newsletter called RagChew.  The article should be about <insert the topic>, should include <insert key points and examples> and should be approximately <insert number - eg 200 to 300> words long.  The article should be written in a relaxed, conversational, accessible and humorous style similar <insert an author that you enjoy, for example, to Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" books>.  The audience appreciates a simple technical style. 

Optionally you could add:  Sources of information about the topic can be found here:  <insert website or websites>   

Once the AI has generated an article, you can ask it to change it if you're not happy - just follow what it's sent you with another entry.

Once you're happy with what's been drafted, ask the tool to generate a Word document using a promot such as: 

Thank you.  Please add the attached images compressed, re-sized and inserted in appropriate places in the article to complement the text: <attach images>.  Generate a Microsoft Word (.docx) file, formatted per the instructions on the following webpage https://sites.google.com/view/cqqrs/home/ragchew-newsletter for me to download.  

The document may not be formatted correctly (eg Helvetica 15 point) and the images generated may not be embedded - so you will need to edit it yourself to align it with the formatting discussed above.

Remember - Large Language Model AI applications are enthusiastic but stubborn helpers and can produce convincingly good - but completely wrong - written material.  The Large Language Model has been trained to just generate words that are often used together - what it generates may not be at all true.  All facts must be checked by you the submitter - it's very possible that what's generated will be 100% readable - but 100% wrong as well.  You should assume that I cannot fact-check what you submit - please do that yourself - so the critical thinking and editing must be done by the person putting their name to the work... you!  And when you find errors or things you don't like, you can try asking the AI to re-write each generated document using changes that you have found to be necessary;  but they can be stubborn - and simply refuse to change what you've told them is wrong.  Interesting times!

Please let me and our readers know how you went cqqrsnet@gmail.com