Well done, well said, Mikel!
In my opinion, Mikel’s open letter is not only polite but also highly necessary.
Those hams not doing it right need to be educated and letters like this as well as threads and posts on this Reflector like some we’ve seen and commented recently should help bringing the lost cattle into the herd.
Following you’ll see highlighted the sentences I most support in Mikel’s letter and I recommend all chasers to read carefully until they are fully understood.
I have recently emailed to some hams explaining them that they shouldn’t send their callsign 2 or even 3 times after I have come back to them in the pileup having sent them their callsign correctly and their signal report. That is done for them to know that I’ve got their callsign correctly, so they don’t need to waste everybody’s time by sending again and again several times their callsign.
My emails were, fortunately, very well received and those hams thanked me for explaining that and they committed to change their behaviour. This is something I’ve been able to notice not too long after our email exchange took place and I highly appreciate it.
I hesitate to disagree with an experienced operator like you Guru but isn’t it possible, although you sent their callsign correctly, that they misheard your [weak signal] sending it due to QRN, QRM, etc, and having concluded you might have got it wrong, resent their callsign again twice to ensure you have it correct?
But you might be referring to operators who routinely send their callsign twice.
That’s exactly the case. The 2 hams I emailed to were consistently operating like that and I had suffered their repeated callsign sending up to 6 times for each single QSO they made, not only when I was activating, but also when I was chasing from home.
That is very possible and repeating the callsign in that case is absolutely justified. But this will usually be one off and it has nothing to do with the case of always sending the callsing 3 times when calling in the pileup with 1Kw and a huge signal and sending the callsign again 3 times after the activator has come to them with correct callsign and signal report. BTW, both reports being real 599.
That’s fine. Chasers often send me their callsigns twice but that’s almost always because I got their callsign a bit wrong the first time especially if they send too fast for me. I usually get it right after the repeats though. I probably need to practice more often with Morse Runner.
I’m actually worse on voice mode as I’m a bit dyslexic [apparently we lefthanders are 11 times more likely to be] and sometimes get phonetic spellings reversed and I don’t do much voice mode (only 2m FM).
If you had listened a few minutes ago on 7.029, there was a European chaser calling to Armin HB9/DL6GCA/P without hearing him good enough as to try a QSO.
He called once at the right time, Armin came back to him about 3 times with preffix and number followed by ? because he couldn’t get the suffix, but the chaser never showed up. Then, Armin said NIL (Not In Log) and kept going with a new CQ. Another chaser called him and when Armin was coming back to this new chaser, the previous chaser called with his callsign again, but he did it ON TOP OF ARMIN’s transmission. It’s clear this chaser was not copying the activator. Why did he keep calling him?
When the copy of an activator is not solid enough as to be able to understand when he comes back to us, it’s time to RX while waiting for propagation conditions to improve or going QSY and do something else.
73,
I believe that’s due to the chaser not actually hearing the activator at all, but calling on the spotted frequency, presumably in case the activator is sitting on his hands listening for callers, rather than calling CQ. Whenever the chaser is out of sync with the activator, they are not hearing each other.
… fully agree, Guru. This is one of the eternal Enigmas of DXing: You can’t work them if you can’t hear them. Good operators follow this rule (and the majority of the SOTA-OPs are good OPs). Unfortunately there are a few out there who get a little too excited from time to time. When I notice such behaviour during my activations, I send an email to the offending OP, explaining the situation he caused as polite as possible. Sometimes it has an effect, sometimes not…
Let me show another example of bad operating manners. The bad habit of arriving to a spotted frequency and start shouting the callsign before the activator had even showed up.
This spot appeared on SOTAwatch,
I went to the frequency, which was quiet, and I waited for the activator to start transmitting.
While I was waiting a European chaser shouted his callsign once and after a few seconds he shouted it once again. Nothing was heard from the activator.
Then, another ham appeared and started to chat with this chaser in their own language. Nothing was yet heard from the activator.
While these two hams were chatting on the frequency and on top of them, a well known European chaser shouted his callsign once but four consecutive times each of them separated by a few seconds. Nothing was ever heard from the activator.
I finally left the frequency without having heard anything from the activator.
Question: why these two chasers didn’t wait listening for the activator to show up instead of shouting their callsing not knowing if the activator was in skip with them and possibly CQing or making QSO with some other chaser?
Please, give this a thought and act accordingly.
Thanks
Can I ask his prefix…?..I am sure he is a …sv… isn’t he?I mean this…“good”. amateur you described for cw…even though that the one I know…has the same bad behaviour and on ssb
My intention is not pointing out directly to any individual hams, not even to specific nationalities, as this would surely spoil the educational purpose of my post. After each one had read the 2 posts I wrote highlighting bad operating manners, they will perfectly know if they have to change or not their modus operandi.
73,
Yes…you are polite…and you should be…I didn’t want to read his calsign… just in cause…and fortunately there are only a very few… amateurs that I call …bad habit amateurs…72 ,73 bw de sv2oyo
I think Mikel’s points are well said. I experience the same issues here in the US with multiple calls, tuner uppers on frequency and chasers giving a report when I was calling another station. It all adds up to QRM. As I have tried to politely tell/educate other chasers who have demonstrated less than best practices, if I can hear you, I WILL work you. Just be patient until the pileup thins out. The only thing I would add is that if you hear a Summit-To-Summit call out, please standby until the S2S has completed their exchange. Dean ~ K2JB
That’s very common here in Europe. It’s chasers who cannot clearly hear the activator’s words/sending and assume that if they called then the activator must be replying to them. They cannot comprehend the activator could be working someone else. Inexperience, wishful thinking, borderline cheating, poor skills, take your pick.
I think we shouldn’t confuse nor judge an occasional mistake, which we all have surely made some time for whatever reason, with those long time established and recurrent bad operating practices of some OMs, which we all would like to see corrected, i.e. those mentionned in Mikel’s open letter.
… keep in mind this was the answer to a trick question from the Pharisees. Not really in the context of this situation here (but often quoted out of context)
