Poor On-Air Behaviour

Old Reflector
1

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Is it silly season? We (the MT) have received a number of comments from chasers and activators about a few chasers exhibiting very poor operating manners. In the past when we have received sufficient complaints we have emailed the station and pointed out what they are doing and how it is selfish and unhelpful. This normally results in improved behaviour straight away.

Well it looks like it might be time for some more emails to go out as the same few callsigns seem to be appearing regularly. Now it’s a fine line between being eager and competitive and being downright ignorant and disruptive. Some people have crossed that line and kept going.

Here is the simplest of simple advice:

  1. If you can’t hear the activator then do not transmit.
  2. If the activator calls for a partial callsign and your call does not match then do not transmit.
  3. If you can’t hear the activator do not pretend to have a QSO and log it. The excuse we get is “I thought I could hear him.” Rubbish, you’re cheating and you will get caught eventually.

Look it’s great that people are keen to take part. It’s not great that they push the boundaries of good behaviour. But please can we all act with consideration for other chasers and activators. It’s only a few people doing this and if they persist we will act. That could result in exclusion from SOTA either on a temporary or permanent basis.

Andy, MM0FMF
obo SOTA MT

2

In reply to MM0FMF:
Great advice Andy!

73, Barry N1EU

3

In reply to MM0FMF:

A warning has been sent to one Chaser this evening.

In other parts of amateur radio aggressive and disruptive operating is accepted as the downside of human nature. In SOTA we have to be less forgiving. Our activators have in general expended time and energy to get to a summit, and often are enduring uncomfortable conditions while operating. They do not need disruptive chasers slowing down their operating and making them spend longer on the summits than they need to. Therefore the policy of the MT is to identify and warn disruptive chasers, and if they persist, to remove them from the database.

I ask all Activators who suffer the attentions of disruptive Chasers to make a note of their callsigns and report them to me. The same goes for Chasers, if while chasing you hear other chasers making life difficult for the Activator - calling when he is transmitting, calling between overs, calling when another chaser has been called in, excessive tail-ending and so on, contact me! We may never eliminate bad behaviour, but we can punish the worst offenders and at least reduce bad behaviour.

73

Brian G8ADD

4

In reply to G8ADD:
FWIW, I think the worst is the imaginary QSO’s because they invariably put a total halt to your activation until they shut up. I don’t know how often they occur in EU-EU activity, but I get them from EU chasers more than occasionally, including today. Too much confusion today to get the offender’s callsign though.

73, Barry N1EU

5

First of all, I would thank you the MT to be concerned about these, let’s say, inappropriate behaviours.

I’ve recently posted about my own experience here:
http://www.sotawatch.org/reflector.php?topic=9318

Later, after reading F5LKW Roger’s post:
http://sotawatch.org/reflector.php?topic=9319

about the S2S QSO we made together, I heard it:

If you listen the recording, you’ll hear that after Roger called “ONLY /P” a HB9 station calls again once.

Here, for me, comes the difference: after the second call, now “EA2/P ONLY, EA2/P ONLY”, the HB9 stn doesn’t call again, but suddenly an OZ4 stn starts his calls (yes, two).

On the third call, again “ONLY EA2/P”, and, even during Roger’s transmission, the OZ4 stn keeps on calling…

Next try. Roger has now caught my full callsign and, after repeating -twice- my callsign, is passing me the RST and his reference. And there is the OZ4 station again!

I could not resist, and sent “HI HI” at the start of my transmission.

We all know that S2S QSO’s are on one hand very pleasant for us, and on the other, the hardest situation you can find on SOTA, being the two on summit conditions.

Sometimes, you could not listen the activator (due his precary conditions) calling to other activator. But not 2, 3 or 4 times… If you don’t hear him, why are you calling? If you do, it is even worse! Do you really expect to be answered!!!

I thought that listening myself would be a good experience. Actually I’ve also learned two lessons:

Humility: 10 watts and a full size dipole, even being on a summit, doesn’t give you the world most powerful signal!

Self inspection: I must recognize that sometimes, as chaser, I’ve sent my callsign after listening activator calling somebody else. I apologize for it.

Would I want to be recorded -as Roger did- everytime I’ve been calling an activator? If I would have behaved as the OZ4 stn did, surely not… Did I?

Dear SOTA collegues (myself included):
What would we think if all activators start recording “delicate” situations and putting them later on youtube for all to hear them?. Would we be proud?

By my side, this post ends my complaints. Thank you for your patience.

Very 73 de Mikel

6

In reply to MM0FMF:
For me this subject has good timing. Last night I was on VK1/AC-008 and had a pileup from hell on 20m with EU stations literally climbing over each other to work me. I realise that it may have been hard to hear me, but when I am calling for “station ending XYZ only” or “the EA5 only”, people constantly putting in their call sign is not helping things. I also experienced people intentionally trying to jam the frequency with fairy strong keydowns - fortunately the signals of most callers were above that of the jamming station.

I guess there are a coupe of issues - VK1 is a rarer prefix, so the normal amateur population were keen to get a VK1 call in the books and VK SOTA activators tend to draw quite a bit of attention when we come up for SOTA chasers, so the same again. As I was running about 80W into a reasonable antenna, I had a decent signal into Europe which also seemed to attract attention of the general populace.

I ended up with just over 100 contacts on 20m in 80 minutes - if the behaviour of the pileup had of been better I would have been able to double that rate, but people constantly calling over each other made it very difficult to pull calls out. I ended up calling by numbers and whilst this certainly helped, some people did not seem to be able to grasp the concept and kept on calling despite a number of increasingly firm comments from myself (and other people on the frequency). Granted the QRM is horrible over in your part of the world with many more operators than here, but the old mantra of listening doesn’t seem to apply there!

To be fair, I think the worst behaviour was from non SOTA chasers - I didn’t recognise the call signs of the worst offenders as being regular SOTA chasers. Personally I much more enjoy SOTA than the standard DXing - maybe I am biased, but I find that the quality of operator in the SOTA ranks far outweighs the general populace.

A couple of us here in VK have become more than a little annoyed with the behaviour of some areas and have actively discussed blacklisting some operators in an attempt to improve the EU pileups. I realise that it can be hard to hear things when signals are low and thus to know when to make your call, but repeat offenders with very strong signals are more likely to end up on that listing.

Matt
VK1MA

7

In reply to OH2NOS
Sorry to OH2NOS/P I worked him on OH/JS066 and a IK station just kept on calling me after I worked him hope I did not create too much qrm for you OM
73 de Ian vk5cz

8

In reply to MM0FMF:

Hi Andy (and all),

I also experienced some issues with some chasers yesterday, but not as bad as Matt was having (I have videoed some of his pile-up from the European end by the way, I’ll try to get this up on YouTube and my blog at VK2JI.com in the next couple of weeks).

This situation underlines what I have believed for some time, a SOTA activation is very similar to a DXPedition station (I have taken part in both) and as such I believe the DX Code of contact fits equally well to SOTA as it does to DX chasing. That code of conduct can be found at various places on the web - here is one:

73 Ed DD5LP / VK2JI / G8GLM

9

In reply to MM0FMF:
Hi to all,
Thanks for this post Andy !
Thanks to Roger also ! his report just show us the reality of every SOTA !

From my part, i have done my own police ! I contact the OM who was disturbing me several time. I suggest him to be kind, and not to call me anymore.
I did not registred his callsign in log.
If after a while he is able to manage his pulses, i will answer him in end of pile up.
it worked, but some other cheaser replace him at each time !!!
73 to all !

10

In reply to VK1MA:

To be fair, I think the worst behaviour was from non SOTA chasers

I spent a little time yesterday in a couple of general DX pile-ups while trying to test a 12 metres antenna, and the pile-up behaviour was at least as bad as you’ve described above; folks calling repeatedly, often in a “get a call in last” competitive manner, continuing when the DX station is obviously in QSO, and taking no notice of the DX station’s “only …” requests. It’s why I don’t usually bother chasing DX. It’s hard to imagine that the offenders have never come across “The DX Code”; they just don’t think it applies to them…

With unusual prefixes the “fun” probably comes when a spot hits one or other of the general DX clusters. You got a dozen or so such spots yesterday.

73, Rick M0LEP

11

In reply to EA2CW:

What would we think if all activators start recording “delicate”
situations and putting them later on youtube for all to hear them?.
Would we be proud?
One experience from a different ham-world (contest adjucating) dealing with similar problems: Recordings are very helpful when presented ONLY to the station with possible questionable behaviour. Short audio snippets (made from SDR-recordings) together with the friendly (!) mail asking for clarification in unclear or problematic situations is very persuasive and less of a public show-off. Some cases of only imagined “qsos” come to my mind which I experienced during some activations with transmissions allowing not the slightest idea that there would have been a qso.

But publishing drastic examples was done, too, at least by one contest organizer. But it should IMHO be reserved to severe cases (and in case of contesting for cases which are extremely difficult to find like 2 sigs simultaneously, therefore needing a stronger deterrence). It helped for a few years…
Best wishes and 73
Chris DL8MBS

12

In reply to MM0FMF:

Having just returned from a 5J0X DXpedition (nearly 17k qsos over 9 days for a “holiday-style” operation; see below for my qso with G6WRW/Carolyn) where the pileups were deep and long lasting, much to our surprise.

All of these comments are relevant for SOTA activations and the responsibility for pileup management lie with the Chaser and the Activator. The DX Code of Conduct for both Chasers and Activators (“DXpeditioners”) is an ideal but, as pointed out, the violators seldom read, adopt, or adhere to these rules. The following are my observations:

  1. SOTA pileups are no different than DXpedition pileups with all the same behaviours excepting a lot of “familiar” callsigns which should make pileup management easier.

  2. As SOTA grows, the pileups will get deeper and last longer as the Chaser quest for award points exists. The higher point Activations will experience more demand. But this is the nature of all the ham radio award programs.

  3. Many Activators are experienced and capable of managing a pileup due to their skill on either CW or SSB. Pileup management is a learned skill!

  4. But many Activators are new to the pileup and can be overwhelmed by the cacophony of calling stations, either on CW or SSB.

My recommendations for discussion:

  1. Education, education, education. Frequent discussions, helpful “advice” directed to “offending” individuals, pileup management mentoring for less experienced Activators and Activators striving to demonstrate good technique. See the website “DX University” (see http://www.dxuniversity.com/ )for a process of how to educate. SOTA Activations are a microcosm of the DXing community.

  2. The limited use of split operation, i.e. for CW a split of “up 1” and for SSB a split of “up 2.5”. Yes, spectral efficiency is important but, likewise, so is the expedient working of Chasers. Faced with the EU pileup that VK1MA/Mike described, I would have gone split just so the Chasers could hear me, an important benefit of pileup management. Portable Activations generally are inherently a weak signal operation. Operating split minimizes the problem of “calling out of turn” since Chasers should be able to hear the Activator before they call, hopefully.

  3. Adoption of the DX Code of Conduct for Chasers and Activators by the SOTA MT. These respective Codes becomes the platform for education. Continue the directed focus of private conversations with repeated offenders/Chasers. Public “shame” is seldom beneficial. Pileup behaviour has always been a challenging issue.

From 5J0X, I was tuning on 17m looking for a good SSB frequency . I ran across G6WRW on a SOTA activation. Even after our exchange and my acknowledgment of her SOTA Activation, Carolyn was still dubious, “I never heard of a call like 5J0X”. I’m sure she thought someone was playing a joke on her! I was looking for M1EYP/Tom or 2E0YYY/Mike to “make their day” but no luck.

73, Guy/N7UN aka 5J0X

13

In reply to N7UN:
Thanks, Guy, there are some very useful suggestions there. I have been working on a revision of the general rules, and in view of your post I am re-examining section 3.7.3, Code of Conduct. In drawing up this code we seem to have concentrated to a great extent on the physical behaviour of Activators on the ground, I think it would be most useful to have more to say about the conduct of participants on the air. Since the MT have determined that they should hold the right of sanction in regard of unacceptable behaviour on the air, it seems logical that acceptable and unacceptable behaviour should be explained in the General Rules.

73

Brian G8ADD

14

In reply to MM0FMF:
Not sure if this posting should be here, or under the other topic : ‘Phantom QSOs’, but here goes.

On GW/MW-001 last Friday (18/04/2014) I had 2 HB chasers call simultaneously. I was able to note one call and part of the other call. With one I was able to exchange calls and reports, but when I called in the other HB, he had gone.‘No names - no pack drill’, but both chasers had logged the chase, but only one was starred.

While I recognise that not all activators are able to add their activations to the database immediately, some mis-copy calls and just a few don’t add them at all, perhaps a count of ‘un-starred’ chases would give an indication of who the real sinners are.

BTW, A quiet educational word in the ear of a miscreant sound to be a good first step in the hope of nipping bad operating tecnique in the bud, but is it effective , or are the ears deaf?

Note to Moderator - if this post is under the wrong topic, please feel free to move it.

Regards, Dave, G6DTN

15

In reply to G8ADD:

I ask all Activators who suffer the attentions of disruptive Chasers
to make a note of their callsigns and report them to me. The same goes
for Chasers, if while chasing you hear other chasers making life
difficult for the Activator - calling when he is transmitting, calling
between overs, calling when another chaser has been called in,
excessive tail-ending and so on, contact me! We may never eliminate
bad behaviour, but we can punish the worst offenders and at least
reduce bad behaviour.

73

Brian G8ADD

Well said Brian and i think its the best idea to start with

Just lately its gone stir crazy on SOTA , in my opinion the Activators do a sterling job whether experienced of not.but the amount of stations calling the SOTA when they can obviously NOT !! hear them or catching only 10% of the QSO is getting out of hand.While none of us are fool proof chasers i like to think i can conduct myself in a manner appropriate to the hobby,along with other regular chasers. i for one am gonna start to take note of the minority of spoilers .
regards
Gez de M0NTC

16

I agree with everybody but by the way, i don’t mind if QRG is QRM or not.
Pile up, QRM, are making so funny SOTA. I don’t forget activators exist thanks for chasers.
May be if activators don’t use sotawatch spot, QRG would be more clear and chasers would listen SOTA ref instead of Read it …
When i climb several summits in the same day, early in the morning chasers are rare and i miss pile up. :-))
Then, SOTA Fever win us. Hi ! So silly, i like it

See u next on summits - change nothing for me
73 QRO
Roger

17

Hello…
For example…:((today 14.062MHz Juerg HB9BIN/p from HB/SO-007 calling s2s Anders MW/SM0HPL/p from GW/SW/002.
The first Juerg calling HB9BIN/P…nothing…next /P /P /P…sooo only a few stations give “STOP” not calling only a listen!!.
Other stations(maybe QRO)non-stop calling.
Hmmm…Juerg QSY too 14.059MHz.
Whenever they Juerg is like HB9BIN/P send for s2s…'pse /P",“pse /QRP"or"pse only /P”…
It’s sad :((.

Best regards de Rob(ert)SP8RHP with ham spirit…Vy 73!.

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In reply to VK5CZ:

Ian (VK5CZ), no worries! When we had had qso I was so enthusiastic that I did not recognize your qso with IK station. DX stations are cherries above the SOTA cake and every dx station gets extra kicks for me! BTW this qso is my longest ever! Matt VK2DAG was the previous one.

I am so called part time ham. Summits time to time and typically I feel me very rookie when I send my first call. Pile ups are difficult to handle because I recognize calls badly and my cw skills are not the best ones. Only what I have learnt after first summit last summer is that try to catch something and ask more from chasers. This works quite well. If somebody tries to confuse the qso, as a Finn, I do not care.

Rules are good if people read those and follow them. Personally I would learn more about two things: 1) pile up handling and 2) cw skills. Couple of times I have logged to dxuniversity and Koch method web pages, but have not found any such what I had used more. If you SOTA-mates know some useful mp files etc. which could help improve basic skill I would be thankful! For me the KISS method is the best one, complicated models give me headache only.

73, Saku OH2NOS

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In reply to M0DFA:
Hi Dave

In my opinion activators ought to list the full callsign of the caller who “thinks he can hear the activator” in the Phantom QSOs sticky thread at the top of the right hand column on the reflector. I did this with the HB9 station who chanced his hand when I was in Scotland last week. After reading the thread the HB9 station must have removed the QSO from the database. I always make a note of the phantom callers in my log - there are very few - and check their logs a few days after I return from an activation to see if the QSO is claimed. I did have one other phantom QSO on the same summit from a DL2 station who did not log the QSO. In that case it was not necessary to list his callsign in Phantom QSOs.

I think doing this may reduce the practice. I’ve had it once or twice also on 2m FM when a chaser thinks you are replying to him because when you are just breaking the noise slightly in his receiver, whilst you reply to someone who is actually hearing you. When the station asks if you got the report (usually several times because he cannot hear you) it causes QRM to the QSO you are actually in the process of trying to complete.

73 Phil

20

In reply to G4OBK:

in the Phantom QSOs sticky thread at the top

Might be worth un-sticking that thread and making this one sticky in its place?