The first message sent on the Moscow–Washington hotline on August 1963, was “THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG’S BACK 1234567890”. This hotline links the Pentagon with the Kremlin. Later, during testing, the Russian translators sent a message asking their American counterparts, “What does it mean when your people say ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog?’

Although in popular culture the hotline it is known as the “red telephone“, the hotline was never a telephone line, and no red phones were used. The first implementation established in the wake of the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis used Teletype equipment, later shifted to fax machines in 1986 and since 2008 messages are exchanged by a secure form of email.

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” that hotline Russian translators read is an English-language pangram sentences containing every letter of the alphabet at least once. Back in the day was commonly used for touch-typing practice, testing typewriters and computer keyboards, displaying examples of fonts, and any other applications involving text where the use of all letters in the alphabet is desired. It was also common for testing the teletype services (a procedure known as “foxing”) when these machines were still used. Even today test or dummy wireless digital comms in marine, aeronautical and military world use it.

Here you have an abbreviated report of reception of a modern day shortwave communication.

16854,0 XSQ: Guangzhou Radio CHN 1320 SITOR-B ryryryyryryryryyryryryryryryryryryry the quick brown fox jumps over lazy dog 1234567890~guangzhouradio/xsq selcall id:2017 ~94 004123100 2018-06-29 21:20 006 traffic ~ist. weather report. navigation warning. cq. last:n/wnr(024) bkdg nil 2018-06-29 (wp3)

This radio communication test was received by Wolfgang Palmberger or “wp3” an european DX SWL (Long Distance Short Wave Listener) on July 2018.

The listened station transmits on the frequency 16.854 Khz, which is

in the range of frequencies known as HF or short wave. These are frequencies that propagate bouncing in the inosphere and therefore can be received anywhere in the world.

Worldwide radio communications can be received with a simple Short Wave Receiver that has HF sideband capability. For example, a cheap SW receiver with BFO, like the $60 DEGEN 1103. Normally used to receive music and news stations from distant countries, we can also open a window to a world of intrigue and espionage. The content of digital communications can be decoded with open source software fldigi feed from sound card input. An even cheaper ESAMACT 100KHz-1.7GHz 1766MHz Upconverted RTL-SDR will tune almost any part of spectrum using your computer as receiver.

The transmitter is a coastal station in Guangzhou China using the XSQ callsign. A coast radio station is an on-shore maritime radio station which may monitor radio distress frequencies and relays ship-to-ship and ship-to-land communications. Guangzhou coast station is directly under the Guangdong Maritime Safety Agency. It’s located on Guangdong Province formely known as Kwangtung or Canton Province on the South China Sea coast.

These broadcasts are sent with the SITOR collective B-mode using the CCIR 476 character set. SITOR-B is also used in amateur radio, where it is known as AMTOR-B or AMTOR-FEC.Is the standard protocol for NAVTEX (Navigational Telex) is an international automated service for delivery of meteorological and marine safety information to ships.

To help the other station tune the receiver correctly, radio operators can send a string of alternate R and Y characters viz: RYRYRYRYRY. This pattern is chosen as it produces the most frequent and almost symmetrical alternation of Mark and Space tones, giving the receiving operator the best chance to tune the receiver before the “real” message starts. However, even if the signal is accurately tuned, the information can become garbled or completely lost due to interference, fading, or noise. For this reason SITOR uses error detection, redundancy, and/or retransmission to improve reliability.

After that RYRY sequence Wolfgang reports a series of quick brown fox transmissions.

Later on the day Guangzhou radio transmited a weather report and navigation warning, whose contents are not included in “wp3” report. But below you have a nice sample of weather radio teletype can be seen on a video from Steven Hanglands that shows the reception and decoding of RTTY (an even older radio protocol pronounced Ritty) using Fldigi from DDH7, part of the German Weather Service, Deutscher Wetterdienst, in Hamburg. The signal goes to whoopin speed of 50 Baud, a roughly equivalent of 0.00005 Mbps.

Over the years several countries developed their own variants of the quick brown fox as French military circuits used “Voyez le brick géant que j’examine près du wharf” (See the giant brig which I examine near the wharf). A typical user of this pangram are the French Navy communications originating in the CTM Sud Centre de Transmissions of Marine Nationale Sud in la Régine (callsign FUG12 , using STANAG 4285 a modern NATO standard for high-speed data transmission over HF ).

2015/06/02 12666.0 FUG12 French Navy, F 0720 USB STANAG-4285 600/L "FAAA DE FUG12" testing "VOYEZ VOUS LE BRICK GEANT QUE J EXAMINE PRES DU GRAND WHARF"

However as we see with the example of China Coastal Station, even in countries with non-latin alphabets the quick brown fox is the preferred pangram.

As the years go by the quick brown fox is still alive and jumping owing to its brevity and simplicity.