Yesterday was a really good example of chasers relying of the spot information and not ensuring that the contact was a valid one while on-air.
We wanted to do at least 3 rare summits and to keep battery usage to a minimum decided to use < 5 Watts on 40m only using the amplifier on 20/17m.
As we share one set-up we decided to start on 40m with me qualifying the summit as a unique (for me) with 5 or 6 contacts then hand over to Helen to finish off; this may have caused some confusion.
The problem is that Helen and I did feel that a number of contacts could have possibly been invalid because often Helen would get a report and then a “thanks Carolyn” and often this was after her call-sign wasn’t heard (exchanged) even after a request for clarification.
So if you have logged the summits with my GW6WRW call you won’t get a star, you also won’t get a star if you think you’ve worked Helen for a while as she is over 12 months behind logging summits and you won’t be able to check.
I know conditions were noisy but that doesn’t mean that details should not be checked during the contact.
Carolyn