At 10:04 PM 3/2/02 -0500, Thomas Giella, KN4LF wrote:
> I think most reasonable people would define the "tail ending" technique
>as: timing the transmission of ones own call to coincide with the hordes of
>other DXers all temporarily ending their calling at about the same time to
>catch a breath. During this second or fraction of a second the QRM drops
>many DB and the 100 watt DXer can throw his suffix or even full call in and
>be heard. It's a perfectly legitimate technique and I used it for many years
>when running 100 watts on phone and got DXCC doing it. It works on CW too
>when the hand cramps set in, especially when your CW pitch is higher then
>the hordes.
> Only recently did I start using a linear on 160 and still only 400 watts
>RMS.
If this is the usage on 160, I can only reply that it is unique to that
band. On other bands "tail-ending" refers to attempts to drop one's call
in *before* the next round of calling begins, and can, but doesn't
necessarily, result in anything useful being covered up from the previous QSO.
On the other hand, the practice that Tom describes is exactly what causes
pileups to implode, IMO. Everyone starts out calling at the same time,
then some get the bright idea of trying to wait a little and dump their
calls in after the first wave stops, then the first wave decides to
re-call, and first thing you know there are no pauses in the cacaphony. If
it were only the QRP to 100 watt contingent doing this, it wouldn't be so
bad, but I see no sign of self-restraint on the part of the QRO guys either.
You can observe this effect at work in any packet pileup on the high bands.
As long as the DX station is successful in picking out calls from the
first wave of callers, the pileup can usually be kept under control. But
as soon as he says "again" or "?", things start to unravel. The more
trouble he has hearing, the more likely things are to get out of hand, and
then the rate drops to a small fraction of what it could be. Again IMO,
split operation is the only thing that makes sense then. Alternating
between up 3 and up 1 seems to me a perfectly reasonable way to keep the
rate up and everyone happy.
73, Pete N4ZR
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