[Amps] 10 Meters

[Jon Ogden]

on 3/12/02 4:30 PM, Steve Katz at stevek@jmr.com wrote:

> I'm not making fun of anyone.  It's just "contest annoyances."
> 
> For ragchewing, who cares?  But in a contest, it would seem best to do
> whatever necessary to make the contact quickly, and get it over with.

I've been quiet here, but Steve does make a good point.  There are reasons
why the international phonetics code was developed (although trust me -
Alpha and Delta sound too close to each other!).  That said, I do appreciate
as well, the effort foreign hams make.  My biggest gripe is that sometimes
they have a very thick accent but yet speak the phonetics very, very fast.

I guess I don't have a beef about someone using Florida for a phonetic or
any other word for that matter provided that they do it slowly.  The worst
offenders are guys who are some of the bigger stations running huge pileups.
They are trying to go as fast as possible.  One guy I worked, thought I had
his call, but after listening to a couple more Qs realized I might not have
had it.  I had to break back into the pileup to ask him for clarification of
his call!

Now combine a thick accent (and again, no fault of their own) with an
overdriven, highly compressed amplifier and it makes it very difficult.
There, I brought the word amplifier into this!  :-)

73,

Jon
NA9D