[CQ-Contest] Bad Packet Spots

[Keith Kerr]

Hi Stewart, Tim et  al,
I didnt see any of this last weekend as my home shack is 
not 'on-line'. 
This practice was, however, very prevalent 
during CQ WW SSB where we had cluster access at GZ7V. It 
was very clear that some of the spots were very 'unlikely' 
and, yes, did put the spot grabber right onto a big, well 
known station. My interpretation at the time was of some 
childish, braindead prank, trying to cause the running 
station some grief and QRM, in the knowledge that a 
proportion of 'grabbers' will call before ascertaining 
precisely who is on frequency :)

In a similar vein.....at one stage last Sunday I had a 
spate of dupes calling me, including a few who 'should have 
known better'. My take on this was that I had been 
incorrectly spotted (correct frequency, error call), which 
had attracted a few looking for new QSO's lateish on 
Sunday. Of course I have no idea whether, in fact, P51DX or 
whatever had been spotted on my run frequency.

I have followed the 'work 'em dupes' debate with interest. 
As anyone who has been at a multi-op with me will know, I 
am an absolute convert to the 'work 'em all' 
philosophy....at least with respect to a contest like CQWW, 
its quicker and there are all the other valid reasons so 
accurately aired over the last few days. And indeed that is 
what I did in accruing 42 dupes in 2689 SSB QSO's last 
weekend. But I did sometimes NOT work the station again, 
but instead suggest we had QSOd before. Occasionally this 
was questioned....so we did it again, no problem. Usually, 
an acknowledgment came back that the Q was in the log. I 
tried to judge when this was an appropriate thing to do and 
maybe I got it wrong. My reasoning for the different 
practice in this 'test was speed. The exchange is longer, 
esp when you are giving a 4 digit serial number, coupled 
with the observation that many stations, esp Stateside, 
repeated my serial no. back to me, and B) many stations 
seemed to move on from my pileup if I didn't pick them up 
first time...this issue has been aired before but there 
seemed to be a lot of people who were not prepared to 
wait......Sorry guys, I was trying get to everyone asap! 
Perhaps I got this wrong but that's what happened. 
Sometimes different rules apply, depending on the 
situation.

OK, more than enough from me. Seasons greetings to all.
Keith GM4YXI 


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