Well Andrew, that’s a symptom of not listening which is bad operating procedure and just plain rude! Despite the bad behaviour, I decided to stick it out and try to make myself very clear as to who I was trying to work. Unfortunately it had no effect. Now years ago I could throw my rattle out of the pram on CW (yes, actually complain on air - people could read morse back then!) and get a positive response (Burnhope Seat G/NP-003 in 2010 springs to mind), but not nowadays.
In this instance, the band was wide open around Europe and beyond. I am fairly certain that I lost chasers from PA to YO… now that’s a wide range of skip distance from the UK and as Allen advised, I was getting over to VE. I’m sure most callers could hear lots of others calling and it just seemed to enflame the situation.
Normally yes, but I haven’t had a pile up like this one for ages. The behaviour of many was totally unacceptable and the worst I have experienced in SOTA in over a decade. I would not have started the thread had this just been a short lived issue.
Indeed, all 27 of them! I only gave 4 callers a report lower than 599. The noise on the frequency was amazing!
Just a brief note to say THANK YOU to everyone that called me yesterday when I activated Rhinog Fach GW/NW-078. The activation was so much easier than that on Great Rhos last week, with chasers calling slightly up and down from my frequency, calling just once and not just piling in. It was a real pleasure.
Well done. Very glad that you and Paul got that one in the NW bag and that you can replace the tick! Glad to hear you got up and down safely - but what about some comments on the excellence (or otherwise) of the route rather than just the quality of the pile-up??
Viki
I was trying to chase @DL2DXA at the weekend on EA8/GC-003 on CW. Sounded like an absolute zoo from my end. Maybe a flora and fauna or something as well increasing the numbers of eager chasers? Little chance of getting through with my 10W and a dipole.
Then they started asking for stations by number. Seemed to work well to me. Just waited for my number to roll around and got in easily. It sounded like they did a good job of ignoring what was to me a loud station that kept calling on all the numbers with no response, until their number came around!
I think these sorts of pleas are probably pointless - because everyone reading it will believe they are one of the good operators, and that the bad operators are other people, not them!
Indeed, WWFF does often attract a large number of chasers which can cause issues, but I don’t think that GW/MW-002 is within a WWFF area. Having said that there were a number of calls that I did not recognise and I even received 44 several times.
That’s fine if the chasers are listening. On this particular occasion several loud stations called regardless of what I was asking for. No ordering scheme works under such a situation.
All I got was a monotone for almost a minute each time. Impossible to copy anything for much of the time which wasted everyone’s time.
Anyway… the situation was soooo much better this last time.
Perhaps that was the case Guru, but I checked the WWFF spots afterwards and couldn’t find any reference to a WWFF activation anywhere near my frequency. I think that a lot of WWFF chasers have SOTAwatch up on their screen and chase just in case it is a WWFF area.
I was thinking about the difference between my last two activations. On Great Rhos GW/MW-002 where I had the crazy pile up, I was running 30 watts output and conditions were excellent on 10MHz. On Rhinog Fach GW/NW-078 I was just running 5 watts, so I was a smaller “honeypot”. The strange thing was that I did actually alert for Rhinog NNR GWFF-0091 on the WWFF website and was anticipating a repeat performance of the previous activation. Maybe it is down to there being (as we say in the UK), nowt so queer as folks.
This is yet another post to point out at another SOTA chasers bad practice, which could be easily solved by putting in good service the title of this thread: Listen, listen, listen!
Most of the times, chasers remain silent during a SOTA QSO takes place, but, after this QRX time, an important number of these chasers decide too early that it’s time to start calling WHEN IT’S NOT!
The chasers should start calling when the activator has finished his last transmission, NOT AFTER THE CHASER FINISHES HIS TRANSMISSION with signal report and 73, because this will not let the chasers hear the last transmission from the activator and the chasers calls are just doubling with the activator final transmission.
It’s important listenning until the QSO is completely finished and the activator had sent his signal to let the chasers know he is ready to hear for a new chaser, be it QRZ?, his own callsign, TU or other, depending on the activator’s style and MO.
The activator transmission right after the chaser sent his report and 73 may be a request for the chaser to repeat report because he lost it in QSB/QRM, or may be an instruction asking for a specific chaser callsign or group of chasers (S2S, /P or DX) and even information about his QRX, QSY or even QRT.
Chasers in the pileup should remain quiet until the QSO is finished and it’s the activator, not the chaser, who determins this.
Thanks for bearing this in mind and not wasting your call doubling with the activator.
