A full report on the activation and why only 1 summit will appear later.
Today was simply the worst example of idiotic and lunatic chasers I have ever heard. There were some people trying to chase me properly and there were a bunch of retarded morons who just kept sending their calls. The calls would subside and then one chaser would tailend. Then the cacophony would begin again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I particularly liked HB9XXX (not the real XXX if there is one I might add.) I sent “DL1? kn” and got the DL1 and HB9XXX. I sent “DL1? kn kn kn” and got HB9XXX. I tried once more and could pull DL1HBT out of the HB9 sending his call over and over. I sent “sksksksksksksksksksksksksksksksksksksksksksksksksk” and hit the band button and went to 15m. Civility and nice chasers from EU, US and Japan, WK2S and 7N1FRE being the standout DX.
I tried split on 30m as the mania was starting again. Of course I’ve never done split on my KX2 so didn’t grok just what was needed. Easy fix… tune VFO to 10.118.8 and RIT to +1.0, poor mans split It worked and as long as i sent CQ SOTA DE MM0FMF/P UP1 things were OK for me. Listening on my TX frequency did show some mayhem.
I could have stopped as I had my 10m multiplier and 4 QSOs. But it’s the proper honest chasers I feel for which is why I continued. If this continues I’ll just jump frequency and band as I feel.
The thing I find most frustrating is when I have someone’s call and want to reply to them, the mayhem continues. But when I failed to decode a single call no one sends again until I ask.
Was the worst behaviour on 30m or 20m (or both)? The latter wouldn’t surprise me.
Neither have I (you know my views on splitters). Though not as bad as your experience I too have been frustrated a few times by a pileup that’s going slowly because too many chasers are calling at once.
With that in mind I just read the KX2 UM (p.30) on split operation and will go and practise enabling/disabling it after I finish this post.
I, too, noticed the cacaphony of morons this weekend, but as a chaser on SSB. They just wouldn’t stop calling, they called throughout the activators overs, they called throughout the chasers overs, it was so bad it started to become funny, then it got so bad that I hit the big switch and listened to music - dammit, even death metal was more restful! There was one EA who shall remain nameless (though I am gritting my teeth) who called incessantly and achingly s-l-o-w-l-y yet quite clearly could not hear the stations that he was QRMing. Grrr!
I wonder if this chaser behaviour is just a statistical blip or part of a trend, maybe rare summits, maybe a dearth of lower HF band activations. Well, maybe it is just the time of year, or maybe it’s the time of man … er sorry.
Maybe Brian it was the same character that delayed my contact with Fraser when he was on Aiguille du Midi F/AB-015 a few weeks ago. Why Fraser’s calls for the G4 were met with a response from someone with an EA prefix I’ll never understand. Thankfully I waited it out and got Fraser after a number of others made it into his log.
I would say that on my last outing when I ran 40m SSB and 30m CW, everyone had their ears pinned back. I even asked for a QRX to change my log sheet and there was an almost deathly silence on the frequency while I made the change. Impressive indeed. I guess it is down to who is on frequency at the time.
As for Death Metal… come on, surely Symphonic Metal. Maybe I’m getting a tad soft in my old age!
Unfortunately this seems to be a new trend.
POTA is the worst. Some send their call 2 and 3 times, others repeat a partial of their call. You can send MM0? and K4… N7… AC1… will answer up. Its very frustrating as an activator and chaser.
WWFF has their share, too.
Wish I knew why this trend started.
73 Gary
20m was worse than 30m. All the culprits seem to be Europeans. What annoys me more is I was unable to bring the pack into any kind of control and order. That’s a fail on my part.
I’m sorry to say that this moronic behaviour is now endemic on HF and it is certainly not limited to SOTA. It’s been a growing problem on SSB for decades but CW was largely unaffected until about the time that the code requirement for access to HF was abolished. Around the same time code readers became widely available. Using a code reader is effectively treating CW as a data mode, with its operator largely unaware of the QSO cadence and therefore inevitably calling at the wrong time. That said, I think that the problem is far wider than just code readers.
Sadly, even highly respected old timers, often members of prestigious clubs and who most definitely know better, are doing it. When challenged about this liddish behaviour they typically respond that everyone else is doing it… as if two wrongs make a right. The CW pileups on the recent J38R DXpedition were just appalling, with 15kHz of continuous callers regardless of what the DX was (trying) to work.
Numerous attempts to stamp out this thuggery have failed. The DX Code of Conduct has been around for perhaps 25 years but, although widely adopted, seems to have had little impact. Perhaps the best thing that activators and DXpeditions can do is to never under any circumstances work an out-of-turn caller. Doing so merely encourages this despicable behaviour. And, sadly, split operation becomes increasingly necessary to make any progress at all.
As a keen Jinjer fan I like complexity and a dash of poetic aggressiveness, death metal is simple at its core, and symphonic metal is never symphonic, but if nothing else you can admire the skill that the genre demands!
I am learning CW at the moment. Stories like these do not inspire me with confidence…
Perhaps I’m wrong in thinking that it’s easier on SSB to orchestrate proceedings; calling people out who repeat their call-sign three times causing QRM for the person whose being called back, or people who take an extraordinary length of time to enunciate their call sign or those who tail-end with their prefix only.
Perhaps once a year, like in many businesses nowadays, everyone with a SOTA account, should go through the code of conduct and renew each year thereafter. If they decline to go through the ‘training’, which would not have to take long at all, they would not be able to access their account until they do.
It may not immediately improve things, but at least people can’t say they were warned in case repeat offenders receive a yellow card.
I don’t think you should be put off by Andy’s experience. Typically, when activating a summit on CW there may be an initial pile-up, especially on 20m or 40m, but if you try say 15m or 17m it will be much quieter. This is partly because at these frequencies your signal will go over the heads of almost everyone in western Europe. 30m has become my band of choice for CW activations but I may have just been lucky.
I think it’s no different really. A good SSB op is efficient and consistent in dealing with the pileup, operating in a way that inspires confidence that all the callers will be able to get through in due course. Same for a CW op. Of course the CW op must be proficient in CW, which tends to be more of a given for SSB operation. In my experience lecturing the pileup or individual callers never works. It merely slows proceedings down even further.
Sadly not Robert. I have learnt the hard way that there plenty of SSB ops who have magic ears and wishful thinking. They call with everyone else in the pileup and then assume that the response must be aimed at them. Their call is never given but will swear blind they heard their call and the QSO is good. Even when others on air tell them it isn’t a good QSO and the “dx” doesn’t log them. I’ve stopped calling CQ on 40m SSB because of such madness. I now tend to do 40m SSB by partaking in the WAB net almost exclusively. I need some way to tell my special chasers I’m going to the WAB net so they can join in.
It was John G3WGV and a few others (one a former ships marine radio officer and some other FISTS people) who beat it into me that if I call DL1?kn and HB9 comes back that I do not work the HB9. I will try calling the DL1 several times before I send NIL and call CQ again. I do this all the time but today if my TX frequency is full of people calling non-stop I’m snookered!
Gday Andy and all.
Sorry you got hammered on the summit to add to the “enjoyment”.
Be interesting to check your who chased me feature of your log and see how many lids actually scored you as a chase.
I agree with John re the old code mode treated like a data mode and lots of new “CW” ops are using it to make POTA,WWFF or SOTA scores and nothing else. Deviate from 5NN and a call sign and they don’t know what’s going on and just hit you with another call sign over the top of your QSO. Take a bug key Andy then only the real CW chasers will know what you are sending most Lids or computers can’t decipher a bug key.
Take care don’t stress its fun for some.
Regards
Ian vk5cz …
It worked and as long as i sent CQ SOTA DE MM0FMF/P UP1 things were OK for me. Listening on my TX frequency did show some mayhem.
