question on sampa representation

Could someone please let me know the  way to represent in Sampa the GA
pronunciation of the vowel in words like dog, long, cost,  etc.

The IPA symbol the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English uses for
vowel in the above words in RP can be rendered as /Q/ in SAMPA; it uses
the same symbol for the GA but followed by a colon, so should I render
the GA vowel as /Q:/ ?

For the a in father and the o in GA cot lot  the symbol Longman uses is
followed by a colon; the IPA to SAMPA chart at

http://www.i-foo.com/~kturtle/misc/xsamchart.gif

doesn't show colons, so should this vowel be /A/ or /A:/ ?

Thank you for your reply and there's no need to go into a discussion on
English pronunciation, I'm just interested in SAMPA representation

David Barrow

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