Based on the comments and description, and reading between the lines, I
believe this OO is a well-known ham (at least in this area) who happens to
be a friend of mine. Please consider this:
1. He probably does sit there, stack of forms in hand, waiting for people to
"nail".
2. He does this because people's behavior in major contests is predictable:
There are always people answering DX CQ's on frequencies that put their
modulation products out of the band.
3. His motivation (since he's not a radio cop) must be (IMHO) to get people
to change their behavior before they get nailed by the FCC. This happens to
be a public service since there probably are some subtle rule violations
that are routinely made in contests by lots of people that nobody ever
thinks about which we can all live without coming under scrutiny.
Out-of-band violations happen to be very simple and very obvious and are
very easy for people to avoid if they pay attention. I can think of several
of these subtle other violations, but I won't discuss them here.
4. It's one thing to get a letter from Riley. Out-of-band violations may
involve interference to OTHER SERVICES. Riley is the Special Counsel for
AMATEUR RADIO Enforcement. Complaints from other services go elsewhere
before they get to Riley. The entire Amateur Radio Service can live without
this.
5. I think the bottom line to Ron's comments was that the OO in question,
just to use a double letter for no particular reason, sends out notices
during SSB contests because we are predictable. In doing so, his behavior
also becomes predictable, and the notices are worth commenting on only
because of this predictability, and their somewhat eccentric nature. If I
bought a million dollars or so of this week's commemorative stamp issue, I'd
probably have to use them for the rest of my life too.
I don't think I can count past five, but here's a story: In the ARRL SSB
contest last weekend I was operating at K2RD. At one point Friday night, I
took time out from a run to S&P not only multipliers, but "ordinary" QSO's
all over 20 meters. (As a first-time WriteLog user, I was having fun
mouse-clicking on the packet spot list.) At one point I was poised to call
a station on 14348.5 (not having noticed how close to the band edge this
was). Ira happened to notice the frequency readout on the 1000D, pointed to
it and said "That's a [name withheld] frequency." It took me 3 or 4 seconds
to figure out what he meant, never having received one of these OO notices,
but certainly having heard about them, at which point I giggled and replied
"Yeah, I guess it would be", shook my head clear of the cobwebs and went
back to finding a run frequency.
Rich K2WR
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